Your balance does not match the bank. How to find the missing transaction

Subtract what your app shows from what the bank shows, then look for that exact amount on the bank's list: one missed entry puts its own amount in the gap. If no single line matches it, the gap is usually an entry recorded twice, an amount recorded in the wrong direction, a typo, a wrong opening balance, or a payment the bank has not settled yet.

Each of those leaves a different mark on the number, so the size of the gap tells you what to look for before you read a single line.

From the founder. This is the problem that made me build Hundo. I would forget to enter something, an account would stop matching the real one, and the only way to find it was to look through the transactions one by one to see which one I had missed. I did not want to do that, so I did not, and the ledger stayed wrong.

Why does a tracked balance stop matching the bank?#Link to this section

Because it is arithmetic, not a copy of the bank's number.

In Hundo, an account's balance is the balance you typed when you added the account, plus every entry on it since. Nothing else feeds it. The bank's number is the bank's own record. When the two disagree, one of them is holding something the other is not, and there is a short list of what that can be.

An entry you never made. The most common one. The gap is that entry's amount.

An entry made twice. You typed it on the day, then imported the statement a week later. The gap is that amount, in the other direction.

An amount recorded the wrong way round. A payment of 45.00 entered as money in, rather than money out, moves your balance by 90.00. So the gap is twice the amount, not the amount.

A typo in the figure. 45.00 typed as 4.50, or 54.00 typed as 45.00. The gap is the difference between what you typed and what you paid.

A wrong opening balance. The number you entered when you added the account. If the gap has been the same since the first day, and no entry explains it, this is it.

Nothing wrong at all. The bank may be holding a card payment that has been authorised and not settled. The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in Circular 2022-06, puts it this way: "The available balance is generally the ledger balance plus any deposits that have not yet cleared but are made available, less any pending (i.e., authorized but not yet settled) debits." Compare your ledger against the settled balance, not the available one, or you will hunt for an entry that does not exist yet.

How do you find it without reading every line?#Link to this section

Start with the number, not the list.

1. Work out which side is heavy. If your app shows more money than the bank, you have missed money going out, or counted money coming in twice. If it shows less, the opposite. On a credit card or a loan, where the balance is what you owe, read that the other way round.

2. Search the bank's list for the gap itself. If the difference is 45.00, you are looking for one 45.00 line the bank has and you do not. If your banking app lets you search or sort by amount, a single missed entry turns up in seconds.

3. If the gap is even, halve it and search again. A direction error moves the balance by twice the amount, so a gap of 90.00 can be a 45.00 payment you entered as income. Check the amount and the direction of that entry, not just that it exists.

4. If the gap divides by 9, look for two swapped digits. Swapping two digits in a number always changes it by a multiple of 9, so 54.00 entered as 45.00 leaves a gap of 9.00, and 1,200 entered as 2,100 leaves 900. It is not proof, because plenty of real amounts divide by 9, but it is worth one look.

5. Shrink the window before you compare lines. Do not compare the year. If your bank issues monthly statements, each one states a closing balance: find the last month where the two agreed, and compare only the months after it.

6. Then compare the short window. In Hundo, the Transactions page filters by account, by From and To dates, by type and by a word in the description, so you can put one account and one month on the screen next to the bank's list. The account's own page shows its current balance, with the initial balance underneath when that is not zero, which rules the opening number in or out in one look.

Can you ask an app to find it for you?#Link to this section

In Hundo, yes, with Pro.

Send the assistant screenshots of the bank's activity list and ask it to find what is missing. Up to four images a message, as JPEG, PNG or WebP.

Here is what it does with them:

• Works out which account the screenshot belongs to, from the name, number or bank it shows, and asks one short question if it cannot tell.
• Reads your own entries on that account over the dates the screenshot covers, with two days either side.
• Matches each line on the screenshot to one entry: the same amount, the same direction, a date within two days, and a loosely similar description, so a bank's "AMZN Mktp US*2K4" matches the "Amazon order" you typed.
• Answers with the lines that are missing from Hundo, anything in Hundo that the screenshot does not show, and, when the screenshot shows a balance, that balance against yours and the difference. If the missing lines do not account for the whole difference, it says how much is left over.
• Drafts only the missing lines, one at a time, and never a line that is already there, even if you ask it to add all of them.

Nothing is recorded until you confirm each draft.

Ask it to find the missing entry, and read its answer against the screenshot before you confirm anything. It is a comparison it can do for you, not a promise that it will always pick the right line: it is working from a photograph of a list, and a cut-off line or a date without a year is exactly where it can be wrong.

The images are used to answer that message and are not kept: your thread shows "Image not kept" under the reply, and on a later turn the assistant will say the image is gone rather than guess what it said. What is sent where is set out on the privacy page.

If you would rather do this from Claude or ChatGPT, Pro connects them to the same ledger.

When is importing the statement the better move?#Link to this section

When the gap is a stretch you never logged at all, rather than one line inside a month you did.

Download the statement and import it as CSV, TSV or Excel. You map the columns once, the preview lists every row with a tick box, and it marks the rows it can tell are already in that account.

The limit is worth knowing before you rely on it. That duplicate check needs the same account, the same date, the same amount and the same description, so it reliably catches the same file imported twice. It does not catch a bank line against an entry you typed in your own words, because "AMZN Mktp US*2K4" and "Amazon order" are not the same description.

So import a period you never logged, and compare a period you did.

How do you stop it drifting again?#Link to this section

Check one account on a fixed day. Once a week keeps the window at seven days, which is a screenshot and a minute. Once a year makes it a job you will put off, which is how the gap got there.

Enter it when you pay, not in the evening. By evening you are rebuilding the day from memory, and rebuilding is the step that gets skipped. How to keep tracking expenses by hand after the novelty wears off covers the other three ways the habit slips.

Make the entry short enough that you do not put it off. Open "add transaction" in Hundo and your usual entries are already there, ranked from your own history, with a monthly bill that is due marked "Due today". One tap fills the name, the amount, the category, the budget and the account.

Fix a wrong opening balance with an entry. Hundo takes that number when you add the account, and the Edit Account dialog changes the name, the institution and a card's credit limit, not the opening balance. So add one entry for the difference, dated the day you added the account, described as what it is.

Common questions#Link to this section

Why does my budgeting app balance not match my bank?#Link to this section

In an app where you add the entries yourself, the balance is the opening balance plus everything you entered, so a difference means one of you is holding a line the other is not. Usually that is an entry you missed, one entered twice, one entered in the wrong direction, a typo, a wrong opening balance, or a payment the bank has authorised and not settled.

What does it mean if the difference divides by 9?#Link to this section

It can mean two digits are swapped somewhere: 54.00 entered as 45.00, or 1,200 as 2,100. Swapping two digits always changes a number by a multiple of 9. It is a hint, not proof.

Should pending transactions count?#Link to this section

Compare against the balance the bank has settled, not the available balance. A card payment can sit authorised and unsettled for days, and both records are right while it does.

Can I just type the correct balance in?#Link to this section

Not in Hundo, and that is deliberate. The balance is the opening balance plus every entry, so there is no field to type over. Overwriting it would hide the missing entry rather than add it, and the same gap would open again next month. Record what you missed, and the balance follows.

Does Hundo connect to my bank to do this?#Link to this section

No. Hundo does not connect to banks, so the comparison runs on the entries you added and on the screenshot or statement file you hand it. Because every entry is one you add, the form is built to keep it to a tap: your usual entries are waiting when you open it, ranked from your own history, and a statement file imports a month in one pass. How to log every expense yourself without it becoming a chore covers the rest of that trade.

Is my bank screenshot stored?#Link to this section

No. The image is sent to answer that message and is not kept in your history; the thread shows "Image not kept" under the reply. The privacy page lists every provider that sees what.

Which parts of this are free?#Link to this section

The ledger, the suggestions in the form, the Transactions filters and the statement import are part of the free tracker, with nothing capped. The assistant, and so the screenshot comparison, is part of Pro.