One of the duties of a banker is to provide statements of account statement or bank statement, to his customer periodically. Usually, bank statements are given monthly except otherwise agreed between the banker and the customer.
A bank statement is a record summarizing all transactions in a customer's account during the statement period.
The opening balance from the previous statement combined with the net of all transactions in the current statement should yield a closing balance for the current statement.
The Advent of computer technology or computerisation in the banking industry in the world has led to popularisation of electronic banking services in a way that bank statements are now issued in soft copy direct to customer's email boxes as and when due.
I'm not aware of any bank in Nigeria today that doesn't do this this is totally different from the transmission of account statement in the form of transaction alerts showing credit or debit along with balances and other basic details which are wired directly to customer email or phone as they occur or at the point of sales.
Banks, having computerized their saving operation, have dispensed with passbooks, which hitherto gave the customer's instant hard copy account statement.
Despite the computerisation of ban statements, the law and practice of banking still allow the use of a hardcopy bank statement which serve the purpose other than what you have in the electronic version.
Hence, customer are still entitled to a hardcopy account statement as agreed with their bankers.
FEATURES OF A TYPICAL BANK STATEMENT
Below are some of the features and entries you will find a typical statement of account.
- Date: This represent transaction date, whether debit or credit.
- Description: This summarize what the transaction is for, either the source of the inflow into the account or the beneficiary of an outflow from the account.
- Cheque number: This is a reference to the transaction of the outflow with the number series of the cheque issued. It will quickly enable the customer to refer bank to the cheque stump for confirmation, in case of doubt.
- Debit: This shows the amount, figure involved in an outflow of money from the account.
- Credit: This shows the amount, figure involved in an inflow of money into the account.
- Balance: This shows the net position, either the sum total of all credits as at that particular transaction less the sum total of debit also as at that same based transaction.
- Summary: Most account statement will contain summary both at the beginning and at the end of each statement, which show the total of all debit, credit, charges and resultant balance after the debits and charges are subtracted from the total credit.
Note that the description column will contain or start with balance brought forward from a previous statement or an immediate position before start date of the current statement and will also contain bank charges which you can always be scrutinized and challenged, if the need arises.