Why is there a small discrepancy in my Dolibarr bank reconciliation?

Small differences (like 0.01 or 0.02) are usually caused by bank processing fees that are deducted from the total transaction but not listed as a separate line item on your invoice. These fees often appear on a different date than the original transaction.

How do I handle bank fees in Dolibarr without manual journal entries?

The cleanest way is to create a 'Bank Service' product in Dolibarr. When using Smart Bank Import, you can map these small recurring discrepancies directly to this service, automating the reconciliation process and keeping your ledger clean.

Dolibarr Bank Fee Reconciliation Problem – And How to Fix It Automatically

You finish your monthly reconciliation. Everything matches.
Then you spot a €0.02 difference you can't explain.
You check the invoice. You check the payment. You recount. You close the tab and reopen it, as if that helps.
It's a bank processing fee — and it appeared on a different date than the original transaction.
So you create a manual journal entry to absorb it. Next month, same thing. €0.01 this time. The month after, €0.05.
This isn't a bug in Dolibarr. You're not doing anything wrong. It's simply how bank fees work in the real world: they don't always land on the date you expect, they don't always match the transaction they belong to, and they rarely show up in a format that maps neatly to your existing entries.
It's one of those things nobody documents until you hit it yourself — usually at 6pm on a Friday.
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Why Bank Fees Break Dolibarr Reconciliation
To understand why this keeps happening, it helps to know what's actually going on between your bank and Dolibarr.
When you manually import a bank statement into Dolibarr — whether as a CSV, OFX, or QIF file — you're working with a static snapshot. Each row is a transaction with a date, an amount, and a reference. Dolibarr then tries to match those rows to existing invoices, payments, or journal entries.

The problem is that banks often separate the transaction from the fee:

The payment posts on Day 1
The processing or interchange fee posts on Day 3
Sometimes they appear as two separate lines; sometimes as one line with a net amount

If the fee posts separately, Dolibarr sees an unexplained debit it can't match. If it's netted out, your payment amount doesn't match your invoice amount. Either way, you end up with a difference — and the only clean resolution in a manual workflow is a journal entry.
Multiply this by a dozen transactions per month, across multiple bank accounts, and you can spend more time reconciling these micro-differences than doing actual accounting work.
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The Manual Workaround (And Why It Doesn't Scale)
Most Dolibarr users who've been around long enough develop a workaround:

Identify the unmatched amount
Create a dedicated expense account for bank charges
Post a manual journal entry assigning the fee to that account
Mark the reconciliation as complete

It works. But it has real costs:

Time — even 5 minutes per occurrence adds up fast across a full year
Human error — manual entries mean manual mistakes
Audit trail gaps — journal entries created to "absorb" differences are harder to trace during an audit than properly matched transactions
Mental overhead — every reconciliation becomes a detective exercise instead of a routine check

The core issue isn't the journal entry itself — it's that you're doing something manually that should be automatic.
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A Cleaner Approach: Importing Live Bank Data Instead of Static Files
The root cause of the bank fee mismatch problem is the gap between when your bank records a transaction and when you import it into Dolibarr.
When you import a CSV at the end of the month, you're working backward — trying to reconcile a month's worth of transactions after the fact, with a file format that strips out context.
A better approach is connecting your bank account to Dolibarr in real time, so transactions — including fees — are imported as they happen, with full metadata from your bank.
This is what Smart Bank Import does.
Instead of uploading a file at month-end, Smart Bank Import connects your bank to Dolibarr via Enable Banking or GoCardless — two regulated open banking providers — and pulls transactions directly through the Dolibarr REST API. Every transaction, including bank charges, appears in Dolibarr on the actual date it was posted, not the date you happened to run an import.
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How Smart Bank Import Handles Bank Fees Specifically
When transactions come in live:

Fees appear as their own line items, on the correct date, without needing manual separation
SMART Linking automatically matches Dolibarr bank entries to imported transactions — including small fees that would otherwise sit unmatched
Recurring bank charges (monthly maintenance fees, card fees, transfer charges) are imported consistently, so you can categorize them once and they're handled automatically going forward
No more hunting for €0.02 differences at month-end because the data was already reconciled as it came in

The result isn't just less manual work — it's a fundamentally cleaner ledger, with a clear audit trail for every line, including the fees.
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If You're Still on Manual Imports, Here's Where to Start
If the bank fee reconciliation problem is costing you time every month, the fix isn't a better spreadsheet or a smarter journal entry template. It's switching from static file imports to a live bank connection.
Getting started with Smart Bank Import takes four steps:

Download the free Dolibarr module at smartbankimport.com
Enter your Dolibarr API URL and API key
Connect your bank via Enable Banking or GoCardless
Your transactions — including fees — import automatically from that point forward

Full documentation is at User Guide
The €0.02 problem is small. The hours you spend on it every year aren't.