Please Note: You must be on an active Neat (Yearly) or Neat (Monthly) subscription in order to take advantage of the features in this article.
Mark your transactions as Reviewed each month by reviewing and matching your transactions with the physical copies of your financial records. Gain peace of mind by knowing your books are balanced using our Monthly Review at-a-glance timeline and statues.
Neat's Monthly Review process is a unique approach to reconciliation which simply means comparing your internal financial records against the records provided to you by your bank. This process is important because it ensures that you can identify any unusual transactions caused by fraud or accounting errors. Bookkeeping best practices say that reconciling your bank accounts monthly is an absolute must for every business. The problem is, the process of reconciling your accounts is tedious and painful for some. The steps of reconciliation are to:
Compare your bank statements with your physical receipts and invoices, checking off those that match.
This requires that you save all your receipts and compare them with a detailed transaction statement from your bank and credit card accounts. That's a lot of paperwork and time spent looking through statements for matching receipts.
Review the items that you didn't check off.
Track down any missing receipts and check for uncleared transactions to account for every transaction for that month.
Neat's Monthly Review process takes a simplified approach to reconciliation and provides you with all the tools you need to review your accounts.
Key benefits to Neat's Monthly Review:
Connect all your bank and credit card accounts to Neat.
Stream all your transactions into one place, where they can be viewed and analyzed together.
Use Neat's Mobile app or Scan Utility to upload all the physical records of your transactions.
Use the Mobile app to upload your receipts and invoices to Neat as you receive them. These are your source documents. Organize your receipts and invoices into folders and never worry about losing a copy of your receipt again.
Action buckets group various types of transactions, like deposits, refunds, and credits, together.
This helps you stay organized by streamlining your workflow to focus on one type of transaction at a time. Or course, if you want to work on all your transactions at once, Neat allows that too.
Item counter and progress bars
Item counters show you how many items are in each action bucket, therefore you know exactly how many more items you need to review before your books are complete. Progress bars show you how much work you have completed for each account and month.
Suggested transaction matching
Neat's ID2 (InDocument Identification) parsing technology allows it to recognize amounts, vendors, and dates on your physical receipts and invoices. It can identify matching transactions streamed from your bank and credit card accounts and make suggestions to you about which transactions and physical records match, all you have to do is confirm the match.
Mobile App Monthly Review
Complete monthly review on-the-go, wherever and whenever you'd like! This is revolutionary not only for Neat, but for bookkeeping systems as a whole. You can mark transactions as reviewed in real time, or while you just have a few minutes while waiting in line.
In Neat, all your transactions and physical records are in one place and you have several tools at your fingertips to help you organize your records and keep track of what has been reviewed. Therefore the process of reviewing those records to balance your books each month is quick, easy, and organized. In Neat, the steps of monthly review are to:
Compare your bank statements with your physical receipts and invoices, checking off those that match.
Select the month you want to work on and use the action buckets to click through and review your transactions for that month. Match them to a corresponding source documents stored in your Neat file cabinet. Neat's suggested transaction matching tool will make suggestions on matches, streamlining your review workflow. Mark your items as reviewed and watch your progress bar increase toward 100% reviewed.
Review the items that you didn't check off.
There should be very few or even no transactions that are unaccounted for. Neat's transaction streaming automatically filters out transactions that haven't been cleared and so you will not have to worry about tracking them down. This helps highlight transactions that may truely be fraud.
How do I get started with monthly review?
First, you need to connect at least 1 financial account to Neat for transaction streaming.
Next, you shoud use the Neat Mobile app or Scan Utility to upload your physical receipts and invoices to Neat. These are your source documents.
Once done, click Monthly Review from the left hand navigation and select the month and account you want to work on first.
While not required, you may select specific accounts you wish to include in your monthly review. Steps here!
How do I select/manage the accounts I want to include in my monthly review?
To open the account selection window, click the button with the gear icon marked Settings in the Monthly Review section.
Neat Tip: You can click the gear icon marked Settings at any time to adjust which accounts you want to include in your monthly review for each individual month!
The account selection window presents you with a list of all your accounts available for review. Choose which accounts you want to include in your monthly review by toggling the switch to the right of each account to On (or blue).
Please Note: If you don't select any accounts, then that month will be marked as 100% reviewed automatically.
Click Close once you are done making changes.
What is the Neat Monthly Review dashboard?
The Monthly Review dashboard reveals at-a-glance which months and accounts still need to be reviewed.
Monthly Review Timeline
Here you'll see a timeline of all review months. Each month shows a review status indicating whether the month is complete or if there is still work to-do. Use the blue arrows to the left and right of the timeline to get to the month you want. Or use the jump-to button.
Jump To
This button allows you to jump directly to any of the following:
Current Month
Start of Current Year
Oldest Open Month
Starting Month
Start of Prior Year
Edit Start Date Edit/choose the month you want to set as the starting point for reviewing accounts in Neat.
Please Note: You can only set your start date back as far as the oldest transaction in your connected accounts.
My Categories/Vendors
Open and manage your transaction expense categories and map your vendors to them. Check out this Help Center article for more details.
Monthly Review Status Key The monthly review status key defines what each review status icon means.
The green Complete icon indicates that the month has been 100% reviewed and has been marked as complete.
The blue In Progress icon indicates that the monthly review is still in progress and requires action.
The blue To Do circle icon indicates that the monthly review process has not been started for that month and requires action.
Account Tiles You will see an account tile for each of the accounts that you selected to include in the selected month's review. Each account tile quickly shows you the name and type of the account, how recently the account has been updated, the account's review status, and the percentage reviewed. Click on any account tile to see a detailed view of the account and activity. Click View All Accounts to go back.
Review Percentage At-a-glance see how much work is left to do to mark a month as reviewed. The percentage will increase as you review transactions and mark your accounts as complete.
Settings Gear - Account Selection Window Click on the gear icon at any time to select the accounts you see in the account tiles for each month.
What is the account detail view?
The account detail view reveals at-a-glance a specific account's review percentage and monthly activity. The account detail view shows you what items still need to be worked on by grouping different types of transactions into easily digestible action buckets.
Account Monthly Review Timeline
Here you'll see a timeline of all the review months. Each period shows a review status indicating whether the account is complete or if there is work still to-do. Use the blue arrows to the left and right of the timeline to get to the month you want. Or use the jump-to button.
Jump To
This button allows you to jump directly to any of the following:
Current Month
Start of Current Year
Oldest Open Month
Starting Month
Start of Prior Year
Edit Start Date Edit/choose the month you want to set as the starting point for reviewing accounts in Neat.
Please Note: You can only set your start date back as far as the oldest transaction in your connected accounts.
My Categories/Vendors
Open and mangage your transaction expense categories and map your vendors to them. Check out this Help Center article for more details.
Monthly Review Status Key The review status key defines what each review status icon means.
The green Complete icon indicates that the month has been 100% reviewed and has been marked as complete.
The blue In Progress icon indicates that the monthly review is still in progress and requires action.
The blue To Do circle icon indicates that the monthly review process has not been started for that month and requires action.
Period Activity Reveals the accounts net profit based on the debit (money out) and credit (money in) transactions streamed into your account.
Account Selection This box shows you which account you are currently viewing. Click the blue arrows to the right and left of the account to browse through all the accounts selected for that month's review.
Account Review Percentage Reveals how much work is left to do to mark an account as complete that month's review.
Suggested Matches Action Bucket A filter that groups all transactions that Neat has identified as having a matching receipt in your database.
Refunds & Credits Action Bucket A filter that groups all refund and credit transactions streamed in from your account together.
Deposits Action Bucket A filter that groups all deposit transactions streamed in from your account together.
Other Unreviewed Action Bucket A filter that groups all other remaining transaction types together.
How do I review my accounts?
In order to review your accounts, make sure that you have connected at least 1 financial account to Neat for transaction streaming. Steps here!
Once your accounts have been connected, you can begin reviewing your accounts by following the steps below:
Get the physical copies or your source documents into Neat.
Match your streamed transactions to your physical documents/source documents.
From the Monthly Review tab, click on the account you want to review.
Click on any of the action buckets or the 'unreviewed' items.
Review each of your transactions and select a match for each. For a full description of transaction matching and matching FAQs, please review this article.
Once all transactions for a specific account and month are matched and marked as reviewed, the account will show a 100% reviewed percentage and will update to the 'Complete' status.
Done! You've successfully reviewed one of your accounts. Complete these steps for each one of your accounts for the month. Once all accounts have been completed, the review month status will update to 'Complete'.
How do I bulk review my transactions?
Open the Accounts / Transactions section and locate the transactions you want to bulk review by filtering to them.
Select the transactions you want to bulk review, then click Bulk Edit at the bottom of the transactions grid.
At this time, the only categories you can bulk edit are:
Vendor
Category
No Source Document
Mark as Reviewed
To bulk review your transactions, place a check mark in the Mark as Reviewed box. Then click Next.
In the next window, review and confirm your changes, then click Next to continue.
Please Note: When bulk reviewing, any transaction that doesn't have a match will automatically be updated to No Source Document. This is because a source document is required in order to mark a transaction as reviewed.
You will be presented with a confirmation window once the changes have been made.
Please Note: In order to mark a transaction as reviewed, the transactions must have a:
Vendor
Category
Source Document
If your transactions are missing any of these during the bulk edit process, you may see a message instead that Neat was unable to make the changes due to missing fields.
How do I edit my Monthly Review Start Date?
If needed, you can easily change the starting month for your review process by following these steps:
Click the Edit Start Date button in the upper left within the Monthly Review section.
A new window will appear allowing you to select a new month and year for the monthly review start date.
Please Note: You can only set your start date back as far as the oldest transaction in your connected accounts.
After making your selection, click Confirm to set your new start date.
Please Note: In order to mark a transaction as reviewed, the transactions must have a:
