To keep track of your financial transactions, you will need a Corporate Agreement for Digital Transactions with your OP cooperative bank, or bank connection software. You’ll also need account reporting services from your bank, to help with bookkeeping and analysis of your company’s finances. Account reporting services include bank statements and reference lists.
A Corporate Agreement for Digital Transactions or financial management software?
Entrepreneurs can track their company’s financial transactions and bank on its behalf by making a Corporate Agreement for Digital Transactions at an OP cooperative bank. This will give your company access to OP's digital services via the op.fi service and corporate mobile services. You can use these to track account transactions in real time, get bank statements, pay bills and invoice customers. OP's digital services and mobile app will get you off to a good start in managing your financial matters.
If you need a wider range of services for tracking your company’s financial transactions and banking, financial management software could come in handy. To get financial management software to work, you must make payment transaction agreements with your bank. If you are using an accountant, you can ask them for help in choosing suitable bank connection software and making the required agreements.
When starting your business, you may be able to do without your own separate bank connection software. You can have your bank statements sent to your accountant through digital channels, which could mean lower financial management costs for your company. It’s worth taking time to weigh up the most suitable option for your company.
Account reporting services will help your company to manage its finances
Bank statement
A bank statement is needed for bookkeeping. It displays monthly account transactions and the account balance at the start and end of each month. Bank statements can be produced each day, week or, for example, on the last day of each month. You can fetch and view bank statements via your preferred banking channel. Statements are available looking back as far as two years. If necessary, you can also save a bank statement for future reference, for example on your computer or in a cloud service.
Because a fee is charged for bank statements, you should request them on the basis of your actual needs. In most cases, a bank statement on the last banking day of each month is sufficient, since you can track your account transactions in real time on the op.fi service or mobile app anyway. Some bank connection software may require daily bank statements, which could lead to unnecessary costs for your company. Ask your bank, accountant or bank connection software provider about bank statement requirements. Each bank statement shows transactions from the selected period.
Reference list
In principle, your bank statement will include transactions with reference numbers. If there are many of these, you can receive a separate transaction list showing the related payments.
You can use a transaction list for automatic reconciliation of your invoicing software records, clearly showing you unpaid bills for the sending of reminders: a transaction list can enable faster tracking of paid and unpaid bills.
Agree with your bank on provision of a transaction list, which you can load into your bank connection software or transfer as a file into your company’s digital banking service.