Problems
EFTPOS settlement does not match the takings
Three things move a terminal settlement away from the day's takings. The terminal settles on its own schedule, so a late card belongs to the next batch. The fee is often billed monthly rather than taken out, so the credit is gross. And a fund benefit, a cancelled claim or a cash payment sat outside the card batch entirely.
Key facts
- What the bank line is
- One settlement covering the terminal's day, while the practice system pushed one payment per invoice into Xero6
- When the day is cut
- Automatically at 21:30 VIC and NSW time each day unless the terminal is set to another time, or by the HICAPS switch where the terminal has not settled itself2
- HICAPS card fee timing
- Up to 1.1 percent on credit and debit card transactions, inclusive of GST and interchange, charged monthly to the nominated account rather than taken out of a settlement1
- What a fund claim costs to process
- Nothing is charged to process a health fund or Medicare Easyclaim transaction, and rental for the primary merchant is 30 dollars a month inclusive of GST1
- Tyro terminal rates
- Cards at 1.1 percent with eftpos at 0.5 percent, and 29 dollars a month per machine in rental3
- Who pays a HICAPS fund benefit
- The fund itself, by direct credit to the bank account the provider nominated, so the benefit is not inside the card merchant batch8
- Fund claims on a Tyro terminal
- The day's approved private health claims are settled on behalf of the participating funds into one statement, and the card takings settle on the same facility4
- When a Tyro fund claim settles
- The next day, seven days a week including weekends and public holidays5
- Same day reversal
- A terminal transaction can be cancelled on the day it was processed, which pulls the benefit back out before the batch settles2
- Where the settlement posts
- Account 106, EFTPOS clearing, at the BAS excluded tax type, taking the settlement gross10
- Where the fee posts
- Account 604, merchant and claiming fees, at the GST on expenses tax type, on the month's own debit10
- What the template leaves open
- Its own note calls the monthly fee timing a generic assumption to confirm against the practice's merchant agreement10
- Which leg carries the tax treatment
- The invoice does. A settlement moves money that has already been earned, so the treatment stays on the revenue account the invoice sat on7
Two numbers, and only one of them is a bank line
The number on the front desk report is the money the practice took. The number in the bank feed is the money the terminal sent. The first counts payments recorded against invoices, the second counts what was inside the batch the terminal closed that night. Most days they agree closely enough that nobody looks. The day they do not, the question is which of the two can see something the other cannot.
Zanda states the mismatch in one line: the merchant processor deposits a single amount each day, while Xero has each payment recorded. The practice system has already pushed one payment per invoice, so the bank line is a total with a list behind it, and reconciling means finding out why the total and the list disagree.
Your Halaxy invoices are recorded individually, but your bank shows one combined figure. And if fees have been taken out before the money hits your account, the deposit won't even match the total of those invoices.9
That is where most published answers stop. Work through the three causes in order.
Cause one: the terminal drew the line before you did
A terminal settles on a schedule, not at closing time. The HICAPS terminal user guide puts automatic settlement at 21:30 VIC and NSW time each day, says that time can be moved, and says the HICAPS switch settles the terminal where it has not settled itself. A card taken after that time is a real payment on a real invoice, dated today in the practice system, sitting in tomorrow's batch.
A manual settlement partway through the day splits one trading day into two credits on purpose, and it is the first thing the terminal vendors' own help pages ask about.
The signature of a cut off is a difference that reverses itself. Today's credit is short by the value of the late appointments, and tomorrow's credit is long by the same amount, so a practice that reconciles weekly can miss a cut off it would trip over daily. Weekends and public holidays stretch the same effect, and one credit can end up carrying two or three days of takings.
Cause two: the fee is billed monthly, until it is not
HICAPS prices card processing at up to 1.1 percent on credit and debit transactions, inclusive of GST and interchange, and states it is charged monthly to the nominated account. It charges nothing to process a health fund or Medicare Easyclaim transaction, and rental on the primary merchant is 30 dollars a month. Tyro quotes cards at 1.1 percent with eftpos at 0.5 percent and 29 dollars a month per machine.
Where the fee is charged monthly it is not inside the deposit at all, so a credit short by a fee is not what the practice is looking at. The canonical templates take that position for the terminal rails and carry their own note that the monthly timing is a generic assumption to confirm against the practice's merchant agreement. The arrangement varies by acquirer, so that question stays with the reader's own statements.
Cause three: money that was not on the card
This is the cause that survives a fortnight of checking, because it is not about timing or fees at all. The takings figure counts what the practice collected. The settlement counts what the card network moved. Several kinds of money live in the first and not the second.
| What is in the takings figure | Where that money actually is | How to spot it |
|---|---|---|
| A health fund benefit claimed on a HICAPS terminal | Paid by the fund itself, by direct credit to the account the provider nominated, normally the business day after the terminal auto-settles and inside the provider agreement's 10 business day limit, so it is a separate arrival on the fund's own clock | The gap on the invoice matches the card batch while the benefit does not appear in it at all |
| A health fund benefit claimed on a Tyro terminal | Settled into one statement for the day's approved claims, the next day and seven days a week, on the same facility as the card takings | The credit is larger than the card payments alone, not smaller |
| A cancelled claim or a reversed transaction | Pulled back out before the batch closed, because a transaction can be cancelled on the day it was processed | The practice system still shows the payment unless somebody removed it there too |
| Cash, a bank transfer or an online card payment | In the till, in the bank as its own credit, or in a processor payout that covers several days and often arrives net of its fee | The takings report separates payment types; the terminal report only ever holds one of them |
The first two rows are the ones that catch practices out, because the terminal took the claim and the card payment in the same transaction at the same counter. HICAPS benefit and gap arriving separately covers that split on its own, and why a Stripe payout is less than the invoices covers the online card money that genuinely does arrive net.
One day drawn whole
Here is an illustrative Thursday at a physiotherapy practice, with the amounts chosen so the arithmetic is visible. The account beside each line is the revenue account the payment resolves to in the allied health template, not the account the settlement posts to. The takings figure and the bank line differ, and every part of the difference has a name.
Nothing in that day is wrong and nothing needs writing off. Each part of the difference is evidence of a real payment sitting somewhere else.
A check that names the cause
Work in this order and most differences are named by the third step. The terminal's settlement report is the document that settles it, because it is the only record of what was in the batch.
- Print the terminal's settlement report for the batch the credit belongs to, and read its gross total and its transaction count.
- Compare that gross total with the bank credit. Equal means the rail is gross and the fee is elsewhere; short by a proportion means the fee is being taken out.
- Compare the transaction count with the card payments the practice system recorded for the day. More in the report means a payment did not sync; fewer means something on the takings report was not a card payment.
- Split the takings report by payment type and take out cash, bank transfers, online payments and fund benefits, then compare what is left.
- Look at the last hour of the day for anything taken after the batch closed, and check whether it appears on the next report instead.
- Anything still unexplained is a question for the merchant or the fund, not a rounding entry.
Where the settlement posts in the canonical templates
All three canonical templates treat the terminal the same way and give the account a different number, because each template starts from a different chart of accounts. The settlement leg is BAS excluded in every one of them, and the revenue keeps whatever treatment the invoice carried.
| Template | Rail name | Settlement posts to | Tax type | Fee timing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Allied health by funding source | EFTPOS (non-Tyro terminal) | 106, EFTPOS clearing | BAS Excluded | Billed monthly, on its own expense line |
| Psychology with booking deposits | Tyro Health and EFTPOS | 101, Tyro Health and EFTPOS clearing | BAS Excluded | Billed monthly, no fee leg |
| NDIS provider, plan managed | Private and self-managed card or EFTPOS | 102, Private and self-managed card and EFTPOS clearing | BAS Excluded | Billed monthly, on its own expense line |
The account is what makes the difference visible instead of lost. Payments go in as the practice system records them and the settlement comes out as one transfer, so the balance left behind is the money collected and not yet banked. Setting up a clearing account and reconciling one cover the Xero side, and reconciling card settlements is the step by step for posting the credit itself.
What not to do with the difference
A difference that gets absorbed costs more later, because the evidence of what was collected is gone by the time anyone asks.
- Coding the credit straight to a revenue account records the money twice where the practice system already pushed a payment per invoice.
- Adding a takings journal on top of synced payments does the same thing, and flattens a batch that can hold two different tax treatments into one line.
- Posting the difference to a suspense or rounding account hides a fund benefit that has not arrived, which is a debt rather than a rounding event.
- Editing an invoice so it equals the deposit breaks the record of what the patient was actually charged.
When the difference is real
Sometimes the money is genuinely not coming. A declined fund claim leaves an invoice unpaid rather than short paid, so the gap sits in the practice system as an open balance. A refund taken on the terminal comes through as a negative line in the batch and belongs against the original invoice rather than netted inside the credit. A chargeback arrives later still, on its own date.
Each of those has a document behind it: the settlement report, the fund's own statement, the merchant statement. A practice that files the terminal report with the bank credit can prove any of them a year later.
What Ledger Map does with a settlement
Ledger Map does not reconcile the bank feed for you. The practice approves one standing map first, and each settlement is then posted as one balanced document set built from the payments in that batch and the accounts the map names, so the bank feed is left with one exact match for a person to accept.
Where a line cannot be resolved it becomes a question with the options laid out, rather than a quiet posting to a default account. A credit short by more than rounding is that kind of question. How it works walks through the map and the approval in front of it.
Questions
Why is my EFTPOS settlement less than the day's takings?
Usually one of three things. The terminal closed its batch before the last card of the day, either on its own schedule or because somebody settled it by hand, so that payment is in tomorrow's credit. The merchant is taking its fee out of the money rather than billing it monthly. Or the takings figure counted something that was not a card payment: a fund benefit the fund pays itself, cash, a bank transfer, or a claim that was cancelled before the batch closed.
What time does EFTPOS settle?
It is a setting on the terminal rather than the practice's closing time. The HICAPS terminal user guide puts automatic settlement at 21:30 VIC and NSW time each day, says the time can be moved, and says the HICAPS switch settles the terminal where it has not settled itself. Anything taken after that time belongs to the next batch, and a manual settlement partway through the day moves the line earlier still.
How long does Tyro take to settle?
Tyro states that private health claims are settled the next day, seven days a week including weekends and public holidays, into one statement on behalf of the participating funds. Its pricing page prices cards at 1.1 percent, eftpos at 0.5 percent and hardware rental at 29 dollars a month per machine. Whether the card settlement itself arrives gross or net of that fee is not stated on either page, so it is one to check against the practice's own statements.
Do EFTPOS fees come out of the daily settlement?
It depends on the merchant agreement rather than on a rule that covers every terminal. HICAPS states its card processing fee is charged monthly to the nominated account, and the canonical templates treat the terminal rails as gross with a note that the timing is a generic assumption to confirm. Comparing a fortnight of settlement reports with their bank credits tells a practice which one it is on.
Why does the takings figure include a fund benefit that is not in the deposit?
Because the claim and the card payment happen in the same transaction at the counter, but the money travels separately. Under the HICAPS provider agreement the fund pays the benefit by direct credit to the account the provider nominated, so it arrives as its own bank line on the fund's clock. On a Tyro terminal the day's approved fund claims are settled into one statement the next day instead, seven days a week.
Should I post the difference to a rounding account?
A difference big enough to notice is evidence of a payment sitting somewhere, so posting it to a rounding or suspense account throws away the one clue there is. The terminal settlement report names what was in the batch, and the takings report split by payment type names what was not. Between them they explain most differences without any adjusting entry.
Read next
- Xero how toReconcile card settlements in Xero
- FundersHICAPS settlements in Xero
- ProblemsHICAPS benefit and gap arrive on different days
- ProblemsStripe payout does not match the invoices
- Practice systemsCliniko Xero integration: what syncs, what does not
- Practice systemsHalaxy Xero integration: sync, fees, duplicates
- HubProblems
Sources
Open questions
- Whether a given merchant facility settles gross or net of the card fee is not settled by the published pricing pages. HICAPS states the fee is charged monthly to the nominated account, and the canonical template's own note calls the monthly timing a generic assumption to confirm against the practice's merchant agreement.
- Whether Tyro EFTPOS card settlements arrive gross or net of fees is recorded as unverified in the research behind the templates, so this page states the template's position and leaves the question open.
- HICAPS settlement granularity, one deposit per fund or one per day, is unverified across the corpus, so this page keeps to the card side of the terminal and leaves the fund side to the funder hubs.
- No AI Overview showed for this query in the 3 Sep 2026 snapshot, so what an answer engine would say about it is described from the ranked pages rather than observed.
- No bank narration is published for a card settlement, so this page names no descriptor string and the matcher learns it from the practice's own feed.
- The worked example is illustrative. The amounts are chosen so the arithmetic is visible, not taken from a real practice's feed.
- Introduction to Tyro HealthPoint
Tyro Health. Retrieved 2 Sep 2026. Source updated 13 Jan 2026.
primary
- HICAPS provider agreement terms and conditions, clauses 5.5 to 5.8
HICAPS. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 9 Dec 2024.
primary
- Halaxy batch payments and Xero reconciliation
Time Well Spent Bookkeeping. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 20 Jul 2026.
secondary
Review
Last reviewed 3 Sep 2026 by Shane
General information for Australian allied health practices, not tax advice. Confirm a treatment with your BAS agent or accountant before you post it.
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