A Bank Statement is a report issued to an account holder on a regular basis, such as monthly, which contains the account balance as of the date of the report and usually a history of transactions for the period.

A Bank Statement will usually be mailed, either by the postal service or electronically, to a banking customer every month. The statement will represent a summary of the bank’s records for the recent month on a particular account, and will probably show all transactions posted to the account, along with the ending balance of the account as of the date of the mailing.

This can be useful for creating a Bank Reconciliation Statement, which is a report created by a business comparing their records to the records indicated on the Bank Statement for a specific accounting period. Some transactions may not have been posted on the bank account, since a vendor paid by a company may not have deposited his check yet, for instance.

The Reconciliation Statement compares the internal accounts of the company to the bank statement and accounts for any differences, identifying which transactions have not shown up on the bank account yet.

In a way, the bank account uses Cash Basis Accounting, while the company accounting is done with Accrual Accounting, so there are going to be some differences.

What is a Bank Reconciliation Statement?
What is a Billing Statement?