# The first minute with the bank

Open the screens of the money side of Accounting, the bank and cash cards, the transactions, the items still open, the currencies and the rate providers, and learn what each one shows before changing anything.

**Banks, cash and currencies** covers the money that goes through the company's bank accounts and cash boxes, and the exchange rates of the foreign currencies it works with. This walk-through opens the screens you will use first and changes nothing.

## Before you start {#before-you-start}

- You need the **Administrator** access right on **Accounting**: the rate providers and their log are reserved to it.
- Each bank account and each cash box is a journal of type **Bank** or **Cash**. The package creates a bank journal; [Create a journal](/docs/accounting-start-here/create-a-journal) adds another one.

## Step 1: the bank and cash cards {#cards}

Open **Accounting/Dashboard**. The **Bank** card is the journal of the bank account, the **Petty Cash** card the journal of the cash box. On the Bank card:

- **Balance** is the ending balance of the latest statement plus the transactions recorded after it.
- **N to reconcile** counts the bank transactions that are not matched yet.
- **Payments**, when it shows, adds up the payments recorded on this bank that no transaction has matched yet.

The **Transactions** and **N to reconcile** buttons are meant to open the bank reconciliation screen, which stops on an error in this version (see [Match payments and invoices](match-payments-and-invoices#bank-transactions)). The lists of the card are reached from its menu.

![The Bank card and the Petty Cash card on the Accounting dashboard.](https://jaah.app/web/image/10204-28fc98a7/banks-and-cash-first-minute-dashboard_bank-en.png)

## Step 2: the card's menu {#card-menu}

Point at the Bank card and click the three dots at its top right; on a phone they are always shown at the top right of each card. The menu has three columns:

- **View**: **Transactions** lists the movements of the account, **Statements** its statements and **Payments** the payments recorded on it.
- **New**: **Customer Payment** and **Vendor Payment** record a payment received or sent through this bank.
- **Reconciliation**: **Models** opens the reconciliation models, the ready-made write-offs such as **Bank Fees**.

The Petty Cash card has the same menu, with **Cash Registers** in place of **Statements**.

![The three-dots menu of the Bank card, with the lists of transactions, statements and payments.](https://jaah.app/web/image/10208-f636eec7/banks-and-cash-first-minute-bank_card_menu-en.png)

## Step 3: the transactions {#transactions}

Click **Transactions**. Each line is one movement of the bank account: its **Date**, its **Label**, the **Partner** when it is known, the **Amount** (negative when money leaves the account), the **Running Balance** after it and the **Statement** it belongs to. The newest lines are at the top. [Record bank transactions](record-bank-transactions) adds lines, and [Group transactions into a statement](group-transactions-into-a-statement) checks them against the bank's own statement.

![The transactions of the bank, with their running balance and the statement each one belongs to.](https://jaah.app/web/image/10210-5ef342cf/banks-and-cash-first-minute-transactions_list-en.png)

## Step 4: what is still open {#open-items}

Open **Accounting/Accounting/Closing/Reconcile**. The list shows the journal items that wait to be matched, grouped by account and then by partner: the unpaid customer invoices under **Account Receivable**, the unpaid bills under **Account Payable**, the payments not yet linked to a bank transaction under the outstanding accounts. Click a group to open it; each line shows its **Residual**, the part not matched yet. [Match payments and invoices](match-payments-and-invoices) shows how to match them.

![The journal items still open, grouped by account and partner.](https://jaah.app/web/image/10214-c977f2a0/banks-and-cash-first-minute-items_to_reconcile-en.png)

## Step 5: the currencies {#currencies}

Open **Accounting/Configuration/Accounting/Currencies**. The active currencies come first, and the switch at the end of each line activates or deactivates one. **Last Update** is the date of the latest rate, and the next column is that rate, in units of the currency for one unit of the company's currency (**Unit per USD** for a company that keeps its books in US dollars).

![The active currencies first, each with the date and value of its latest rate.](https://jaah.app/web/image/10218-6f068bb3/banks-and-cash-first-minute-currencies_list-en.png)

## Step 6: where the rates come from {#providers}

Open **Accounting/Configuration/Currency Rate Providers**. Three public sources are set up for every company: the **European Central Bank**, the **Central Bank of the UAE** and **ExchangeRate-API (open)**. None of them needs a subscription. The **Health Status** tells how the last run went: **OK**, **Error** when the last call failed, **Idle** when the provider has never run. The rates are fetched every day only once the automatic update is turned on in the settings; **Update Now** on a provider fetches them at any time. The switch is in the settings.

![The rate providers of each company, with their health; the last call of one of them failed.](https://jaah.app/web/image/10222-38ba0d1a/banks-and-cash-first-minute-providers_list-en.png)

## What you have seen {#what-you-have-seen}

The cards sum up each bank account and cash box, the transactions list is the bank's record line by line, the open items wait for their match, and the currencies take their rates from the providers. The user guide takes each of them in turn: [Record bank transactions](record-bank-transactions), [Group transactions into a statement](group-transactions-into-a-statement), [Match payments and invoices](match-payments-and-invoices), [Keep currency rates up to date](keep-currency-rates-up-to-date) and [Banks, cash and currencies settings](banks-and-cash-settings). [How bank lines, statements and rates fit together](how-banks-statements-and-rates-fit-together) explains what happens behind the screens.

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- Source: https://jaah.app/docs/banks-and-cash/first-minute-with-the-bank
- Updated: 2026-10-23
- Version: Banks, cash and currencies 19.0.3.1.1
- Verified: 2026-10-23