Matching links a bank transaction to the receipt or invoice that documents it. In the Transaction Manager, SparkReceipt does most of this for you automatically and asks you to confirm the rest. This article covers how automatic matching decides what to link, how to handle Suggested matches, and how to match a transaction by hand — including splitting one transaction across several receipts.
How automatic matching works
Whenever transactions are imported — from an uploaded statement or a connected bank account — SparkReceipt compares each one against your unmatched receipts and invoices and scores how well they fit on four things:
- Amount — the biggest factor. Same-currency amounts have to be close (within roughly 1%); when the receipt and the transaction are in different currencies the tolerance is wider (around 6%) to allow for exchange rates and processor fees.
- Date — a card purchase usually posts to the bank a few days after the receipt date, so candidates are searched in a window around the transaction (roughly 10 days before to 3 days after).
- Merchant / vendor name — including abbreviations and payment-processor prefixes on the bank line.
- Currency and direction — money-out transactions match expenses, money-in transactions match income; a direction mismatch is never linked.
Based on that score, SparkReceipt does one of three things:
- Confident match → Matched. The receipt is linked automatically.
- Plausible but not certain → Suggested. The transaction is marked Suggested with a confidence percentage and waits for your decision. Hovering the suggestion explains it's an AI-suggested match to review and approve.
- No good candidate → Unmatched. Nothing is linked and the transaction waits for you.
For matches that the main engine leaves unmatched, SparkReceipt also runs an AI pass that can propose additional Suggested matches — always as a suggestion for you to confirm, never as an automatic link.
Approving and rejecting suggestions
A Suggested transaction shows two actions:
- Approve — confirms the receipt matches and marks the transaction reconciled. Tooltip: "Confirm this receipt matches the transaction and mark it reconciled."
- Reject — dismisses that suggestion. The receipt won't be linked and the transaction goes back to Unmatched. A rejected suggestion is remembered and won't be proposed again.
To clear a batch quickly, switch to the Needs review queue, select several transactions, and use Approve in the bulk action bar.
Matching a transaction by hand
If no receipt was suggested, or the suggestion is wrong, open the match panel: click the transaction row, use Pick document, or press F. The panel is titled Match transaction and has two parts:
- Suggested matches — SparkReceipt's ranked candidates, each with a match percentage and the reasons it scored well (for example Exact amount, Vendor matches, Date within window, Same currency). Click Use this match to link one.
- Search all documents — search your whole library by text, date range, or amount when the receipt isn't in the candidate list. Select the document and click Link to transaction.
If the receipt you pick is already linked to another transaction, SparkReceipt warns you ("Already linked elsewhere") and offers Link here anyway, which moves the receipt to this transaction.
Matching one transaction to several receipts (multi-match)
Sometimes a single bank charge covers several receipts — an aggregated card settlement, for example. In the match panel you can select more than one document; the panel keeps a running total and tells you how much of the transaction amount is still unaccounted for. When the selection is complete, use Link documents (the button shows how many).
The selected receipts should add up to the transaction amount. If they don't, SparkReceipt flags it — "These documents don't add up to the transaction amount" — and you can either adjust the selection or choose Link anyway. A transaction matched to several documents is labeled as matched to that number of documents; use the Unlink documents panel to detach individual receipts or all of them.
Re-running matching after adding receipts
Automatic matching runs at import time, so receipts you add later aren't matched to already-imported transactions on their own. To fix that, select the transactions and use Re-match (in the bulk action bar). SparkReceipt runs the matching engine again against your current documents in the background, and the results appear shortly.
Unlinking
To undo a match, use Unlink on the transaction. For a transaction matched to several receipts, the Unlink documents panel lets you remove just one receipt while the transaction stays matched to the rest, or Unlink all.
How matching improves over time
SparkReceipt learns from what you confirm and correct:
- Rejected suggestions never come back — once you reject a suggested match, that pairing is excluded from future matching.
- Your confirmed matches teach the merchant patterns — when you consistently match a cryptic bank descriptor (say, "AMZN MKTP US") to a merchant, SparkReceipt remembers the association and uses it to match similar lines later.
- Your manual categorizations inform categorization — recent categories you set by hand are used as context when new transactions are categorized.
Keyboard shortcuts
The Transaction Manager has shortcuts for fast review: navigate between transactions, approve, reject, exclude, unlink, select, find match, create expense, and destroy expense. The full list is in the Keyboard shortcuts helper in the view.
Troubleshooting
If a receipt you expected to match didn't, see Why aren't my receipts matching bank transactions? and I can't find my receipt to match. For transactions that have no receipt at all, or that are transfers between your own accounts, see Transfers, exclusions, and creating entries in the Transaction Manager.