CAPTURE
Keep the evidence, not the memory
A receipt is proof that a payment was for the business. Without it a bank line is just money leaving — your accountant can see the amount but not the reason, and a tax authority can disallow the expense entirely. The discipline is to capture at the moment of spending, because a receipt in a coat pocket in March is a receipt that does not exist in June.
In Summarly
Snap it with the iPhone Shortcut from the lock screen, drop a PDF in, or forward the email to your workspace's own receipt address. Summarly reads the merchant, date and amount off it.
IMPORT
Get the bank's own record in
The bank statement is the spine of the month: it is the one record neither you nor your accountant can argue with. Everything else in bookkeeping is an attempt to explain the lines on it. Import it whole rather than typing in the transactions you remember — the ones you forget are the ones that matter.
In Summarly
Drop in a CSV or statement file from any bank. Columns are mapped for you, re-imports are deduplicated, and foreign-currency card fees are linked back to the purchase that caused them.
MATCH
Put the evidence against the entry
Matching is the join between the two records: this receipt is that bank line. It is the step that turns a pile of paper and a list of numbers into an audit trail — a claim you can defend three years later without remembering anything. Done by hand it is the slowest part of the month, which is why it is the part most often skipped.
In Summarly
Summarly matches on amount, date and merchant, and only brings you the ones it cannot call. Foreign purchases match on the original-currency amount, not the converted one.
CATEGORISE
Say what the money was for
A category is what turns a payment into a figure on a statement: travel, equipment, subcontractors. Get them consistent and your accounts mean something month to month; get them ad hoc and every report is a new opinion. Consistency matters more here than precision — the same vendor in the same place every time.
In Summarly
New transactions are categorised from your own vendor history, onto a two-level chart of accounts your accountant will recognise. Rules key off the vendor, not a fragile text match, so setting one once holds.
REVIEW
Find the gaps while they are still cheap
Every month has loose ends: a payment with no receipt, a receipt with no payment, a duplicate, a line nobody can identify. Finding them now costs a minute each, because you still remember the day. Finding them at year-end costs an email to your accountant, a reply, and a guess. This is the step that decides whether the year is calm.
In Summarly
Unmatched lines, duplicate receipts and missing documents are flagged as they arise and collect in one queue — usually a minute's worth, and the only thing the month asks of you.
RECONCILE
Agree with the bank, to the cent
Reconciling is proving that your books and the bank tell the same story — that the closing balance you have is the closing balance the bank has. It is the check that catches the transaction imported twice, the one never imported at all, and the fee nobody noticed. A month that reconciles is a month you can close and stop thinking about.
In Summarly
Balances are carried from the statements you imported, so a period that does not agree is visible rather than discovered later.
FILE
The deadlines, and what they will cost
Bookkeeping exists in the end to answer official questions on official dates: a VAT return each quarter, provisional tax, a year-end. The dates are knowable a year ahead and the amounts are knowable from the books you have been keeping — which is the entire argument for keeping them monthly instead of in one long weekend.
In Summarly
Your VAT position updates as transactions land, and every deadline is mapped a year ahead with an amount estimated from your real figures. The dates and the computations are local — the real ones for your country, not a generic calendar, starting with Cyprus. The other seven steps are the same in any country.
HAND OFF
What your accountant opens
The last step is giving someone else the month. What arrives decides what you pay for: a shoebox is billed as bookkeeping, a closed month is billed as accounting. The seven steps above are the difference between the two — and they became yours by default, not because they need you, but because for a long time nobody else was going to do them first.
In Summarly
Invite your accountant straight into the workspace, or export a bundle with every transaction, its VAT columns and its receipt attached.