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The unbalanced notification indicates a discrepancy between your bookkeeping data and Silverfin. While it may appear concerning, it’s typically caused by a specific issue that can be identified and resolved. This guide outlines the key checks to help you quickly locate and address the root cause.

Table of contents

Account Mapping & Account Types

If a mapping list is utilised in a file: 

  • Check whether the account mapping is correct:
    • Are all balance sheet accounts mapped to the corresponding balance sheet accounts in Silverfin?
    • Are all P&L accounts mapped to the corresponding P&L accounts in Silverfin?
  • If not, this may lead to an imbalance between assets, liabilities, equity, and income statement.
  • Silverfin applies opening balances only to balance sheet accounts (such as assets, liabilities, and equity), not to income or expense accounts. Therefore, correctly classifying accounts is essential to ensure accurate balances and proper roll-forwards.
  • A common mistake is mapping the Dividends Paid account to an Equity type instead of an Expense.

How to review account types? 

Silverfin automatically checks whether your accounts are mapped correctly based on what’s coming from the bookkeeping system. To review this:

  1. Through the left navigation panel, click on the dropdown menu.
  2.  Then click on 'Accounts'.
  3. If an account type in Silverfin does not match the type in your bookkeeping software or manually uploaded file, it will be highlighted in grey in the account type column.
  4. To remap the account, either navigate through the left navigation panel to the 'Mapping' option or while you are already in the accounts overview. If the account you need is not available, please contact your admin user to update the mapping list.

Financial years

  • Confirm that all prior periods are properly closed in your bookkeeping software. Silverfin relies on this to accurately retrieve the Retained Earnings figure.
  • Check whether the sync start date aligns with the start of the financial year. If these dates differ, some data may be missing from the synchronisation, resulting in an imbalance. Check the following article if you need to amend the start date of the synchronisation: How can I remove or edit start date of synchronisation? 
  • Verify that the book years and booking periods in Silverfin match those in your bookkeeping software. Even a minor mismatch can result in certain transactions not being imported correctly, causing an imbalance. Silverfin uses the booking period (not the booking date) to determine where a transaction is shown.
    If a period is shortened, data is pushed to the next period because the shortened one is no longer considered full. Each transaction includes both a booking period and a booking date, but the booking period takes priority.

Opening balances

  • When working with a sync, Silverfin creates the opening balances only once, when the sync connection is first established. At that point, Silverfin asks your bookkeeping system for the balances as of the sync start date and stores them. From then on, every sync retrieves only the transactions posted after that start date, the stored opening balances themselves are not touched again. Resyncing the connection retrieves those transactions once more, but it does not change the stored opening balances. 
  • This is by design: it protects a financial year that the accountant is currently preparing so that backdated changes in the bookkeeping system cannot alter that year without proper control. The trade-off when working with a sync start date is that when corrections are made to a prior period in your bookkeeping software afterwards, the stored opening balances can become outdated and no longer match the current figures there. If you suspect this is causing an imbalance, contact Silverfin Support. 
  • Sometimes, the opening balance transfer can cause the imbalance. Check the opening balance settings in the Period tab. Consult the following article: How can I deactivate the rollforward of opening balances and retained earnings? 

Manual Upload

  • If you’re uploading data manually, verify the number formatting in Excel. Minor rounding or formatting issues can accumulate and cause imbalances.
  • Ensure there are no blank rows or subtotal lines.
  • Use a dot (.) as the thousands separator and a comma (,) as the decimal separator.
  • Ensure there are no discrepancies in the source data before exporting from your accounting software.

Adjustments

  • While Silverfin synchronises changes made in your bookkeeping system, the reverse is not true. Adjustments made in Silverfin are not pushed back to your bookkeeping software. Therefore, if you make adjustments in Silverfin that should also be reflected in your accounts, you must manually enter them in your bookkeeping system.
  • To avoid adjustments being processed twice in Silverfin, go to the ‘Adjustments’ tab, click ‘Actions’, and select ‘Mark all adjustments as posted’ once they’ve been entered in your bookkeeping system.

Synchronisation issues

In some cases, there may be a sync issue between your bookkeeping software and Silverfin. This may prevent certain account changes from syncing properly, resulting in missing or outdated data.

  • Carefully review the error message you receive. The message often points to something to check in your bookkeeping software, indicates API rate limits or flags credential errors.
  • Consult our Knowledge Base articles for common errors related to specific synchronisations, you may find a quick solution there.
  • If the problem persists or the error message is unclear, contact our support for assistance.
  • More information you can find in the following article: Sync errors in Silverfin: What to do. 

Still Unbalanced?

If the problem remains unresolved and escalation is required, please provide the following to the Silverfin Support:

  • File name  
  • File URL link
  • Error message (if any)
  • The specific period in which the issue starts
  • Which accounts are impacted?
  • Include the trial balance and transactions for the affected accounts in the first unbalanced period.