Your supplier statement and Tally balance don't agree.

₹1,000 is a difference, not an entry

In a fictional example, your ledger shows ₹28,000 payable. The supplier statement shows ₹29,000. Someone suggests a ₹1,000 adjustment to close the account. I would ask which document supports it before approving any entry.

The difference could be an unapplied credit. It could be a short payment the supplier disputes. Or one report could describe a different cutoff date. The same number can arise from different facts, and the correct response depends on those facts.

This is different from GSTR-2B reconciliation. A supplier statement describes an account relationship. It may contain payments and commercial adjustments that are not a list of invoices furnished on the GST portal.

It is also different from checking a single invoice against a PO. Those controls can supply evidence to this review, but the supplier's closing balance needs the full account story.

Agree on what the reports describe

Use the same account identity and cutoff date. Check whether the statement covers one GST registration or several, and whether your report covers the same supplier ledger. A shared trading name does not guarantee the same scope.

Keep the original statement file and your dated ledger export. If the supplier sends a revised version, retain the earlier copy with a note. A reconciliation should be reproducible from the versions actually compared.

Start with the opening balance. If it differs, isolate that difference before walking the new transactions. Otherwise an old unexplained amount follows every monthly close while the current month's rows appear to match.

Compare invoice numbers exactly, using supplier identity and date where needed. Prefixes, slashes and financial-year series matter. Do not assume invoice 84 belongs to the current year or to the supplier account you happen to have open.

The vendor master identity check is useful here. If two legal suppliers or registrations were merged under one ledger name, balance reconciliation will expose a master-data problem rather than a missing document.

Walk the fictional account

Our example starts at zero. A ₹59,000 invoice is recorded on both sides. Your records show a ₹30,000 payment and a supplier credit of ₹1,000, leaving ₹28,000. The statement recognises the payment but not the credit, so it shows ₹29,000.

First establish that the credit is genuine and belongs to this invoice or account. Then ask why it is absent from the statement. The supplier may have issued it after the cutoff, applied it to another account or not agreed it at all.

If your ledger entry reflects an expected credit rather than an issued one, the difference is not automatically the supplier's mistake. Return to the agreement and the accounting review. A tidy internal entry cannot establish an external settlement.

A payment difference needs a bank reference and remittance allocation. “Paid last week” does not prove which invoice was settled. One transfer can cover several bills; one bill can have several transfers.

For a withholding or other deduction, retain the appropriate supporting trail. Don't ask the supplier to guess why the remittance was lower. The TDS and GST discussion explains why separate tax tracks should not be collapsed into a vague discount label.

Build the worksheet, then chase from it

You can download the blank reconciliation worksheet. It contains headers only, with no supplier records or tax formulas. It is a working aid, not a connection to Tally or your bank.

For each unmatched item, record which side has it, the source reference and the next action. An owner and a review date make the item usable. Avoid a single comments column full of “follow up,” which gives nobody a document to find.

An invoice on the supplier statement is not automatically authority to post it. Obtain the original, check whether it was already recorded under another reference and run the required approval process. The duplicate check still matters when you are trying to clear an exception.

A credit note is not a negative number with no story. Establish what it changes and how it affects the original supply. Our later discount guide separates a commercial settlement from a tax adjustment.

When an item resolves, note what changed and retain the evidence. “Closed” should mean the identified issue was settled, not that someone deleted it from the working file to make the count smaller.

Carry unresolved items honestly

Agree the resolved balance where possible and keep the remaining differences explicit. Some issues take longer than a month. A disputed invoice should carry forward with its identity and owner, not reappear as an unexplained opening-balance gap.

Do not silently net unrelated amounts. A supplier's credit for one legal entity may not settle another entity's invoice. Check the authorised treatment rather than letting a spreadsheet make the relationship.

Age unresolved payment allocations as well as invoices. They can affect the payment-linked ITC review if nobody can establish which bill was paid. A supplier-level zero balance is not always a complete invoice-level allocation story.

EntryLedger extracts and validates invoices; it does not ingest supplier statements, maintain payment balances or perform this reconciliation. Its reviewed source records can help identify a missing bill, but the worksheet remains your accounts process.

Tally remains the ledger you compare, subject to your own posting and review controls. EntryLedger's XML handoff is a preview, not a qualified statement-reconciliation or import result.

The next time the two closing balances differ, write the difference on the exception sheet. Give it a source document to find. Post only the transaction you can explain.