What does “cleared balance” on a bank statement mean?

Which figure on the statement is it?

Start with the mechanics rather than the word. A bank keeps a running record of your account, and at any moment some items in that record are finished and some are still in motion. The cleared balance is the total of the finished ones. It is the institution's arithmetic on its own records — what it has taken in and paid out for you — with nothing in it that is still on its way through.

The label itself is not standardized, and that is the first thing to know about it. Citi tells checking customers that their current balance is the total amount in the account at the start of the business day, including all completed transactions but not pending purchases, withdrawals or deposits that have not fully cleared. Hancock Whitney calls its posted-items figure the ledger balance, defines it as the balance of funds based solely on deposits and withdrawals posted during nightly batch processing and, at that bank, excludes amounts subject to a hold. Two institutions, two words, one idea: a total assembled only from items the institution has finished handling. Neither bank labels its figure “cleared balance”. If your statement or screen says “cleared balance”, find that institution's own definition of the words.

What has to happen before an item counts toward it?

The condition is the bank's processing state, not your action. You can write a check, swipe a card or hand a teller a deposit, and none of those moves this figure by itself. What moves it is the bank finishing the item.

PNC describes the two states plainly. A pending transaction is a debit or credit to a bank or credit card account that has been approved but not yet processed. A posted transaction is a finalized transaction that has been processed by the merchant and your bank. Only the second kind is inside a cleared balance.

Hancock Whitney attaches a clock to that transition for its own accounts: its ledger balance rests on deposits and withdrawals posted during nightly batch processing, so an item joins the figure when a processing run picks it up, not when you made it. An authorization is a claim on funds; clearing is the settlement that follows it.

How is it different from the available balance?

This is the distinction that costs money to get wrong. Citi describes the available balance as the amount of money you can access right now. The cleared figure is not that. It reports what has finished, not what you may spend.

Hancock Whitney spells out the relationship at its own bank: the available balance is the ending balance on the previous banking day after posted transactions — the ledger balance — plus or minus pending transactions such as deposits, debit card transactions or ATM withdrawals not yet posted, and minus any holds the bank has placed on the account. PNC makes the general point about pending items: they affect your available balance even though the funds have not officially been debited or credited to the account.

So the available figure can sit below the cleared one, when authorizations and holds are outstanding, or above it, when something has been credited but not yet posted. Never commit funds against the cleared figure. If a payment has to leave today, the available balance is the number that answers the question.

Take an account whose posted-only figure is 12,480.00, with a card authorization of 640.00 from yesterday evening that has not yet posted. On that bank's formula the available balance is 11,840.00, and 11,840.00 — not 12,480.00 — is what the account can support today.

Which other balances sit next to it?

Most institutions show more than one figure for a single account, so identify each before deciding which one you are reading.

The available balance is the spendable one, built from the posted figure adjusted for pending items and holds. At the institutions cited here, the figure built from posted items only is published as current balance (Citi), ledger balance (Hancock Whitney) or, on a card, current balance (Capital One). Whether your own bank's “current” or “ledger” figure is computed the same way — for example whether it excludes amounts on hold, as Hancock Whitney's does — is set by that bank's definition, not by the name. On a periodic statement there is also a starting balance and an ending balance for the statement period, which cover the balance, deposits, withdrawals, direct deposits, transfers, fees and other charges occurring during that period — the ending balance is a cleared figure frozen at the statement's closing date rather than a live one. On a credit card you will also meet the statement balance, which Capital One describes as what you owe at the end of a billing cycle; it is a period figure, not a running one.

The test to apply to any of them is simple: does this number include things the bank has not finished, and as of when was it computed?

Why doesn't it match what I think is in the account?

Because your picture of the account includes things the bank has not processed yet, and this figure includes none of them. Checks you have written sit outside it until someone presents them. A deposit you made is outside it while it is still being collected. A card purchase from last night is an approved but unprocessed item, so it is outside it too, even though the merchant already has your authorization.

None of that means the bank is wrong or that your records are wrong. The two views are taken from different vantage points in time: yours counts items from the moment you initiate them, the bank's counts them from the moment it finishes them. When your figure and the bank's differ, the gap is normally the list of items in flight between those two moments.

Which labels mean the same figure, and which only look similar?

The banks cited here publish the posted-items-only figure as current balance or ledger balance, and none of them labels a figure “cleared balance”. If your statement or screen says “cleared balance”, find that institution's own definition of the words. If a figure carries no qualifier, do not assume which one it is; check the institution's definitions or the statement legend.

Labels that sit nearby and mean something else: available balance, statement balance on a card, and the statement period's ending balance — each is defined above.

Because the wording is institution-specific, do not carry a definition from one bank to another. Find the definition your own institution publishes for the exact words on your screen — the same two words can head different columns at different banks, and nothing in the display tells you when that has happened.

Does the app show the same figure as the statement?

Not necessarily, and this is the most common source of confusion for someone comparing the two. TD Bank notes that a printed bank statement does not show pending transactions, which mobile and online banking dashboards usually do. A live screen is therefore likely to show you at least two figures — the cleared one and an available one that reflects pending activity — while the periodic statement reports the cleared side of the account only, for a closed window of time.

If you met the term on an app or an online dashboard, you are looking at the account as it stands now. If you met it at the top or bottom of a statement, you are looking at the account as it stood on the statement's dates. The definition of the label does not change between surfaces; the moment it is stated as of does.

As of when is the figure true?

Always attach a moment to it, because the figure without one is unusable. Citi's current balance is stated as of the start of the business day. Hancock Whitney's ledger balance follows nightly batch processing, so it reflects the position after the most recent run. A statement's ending balance is stated as of the last day of the statement period.

This is why the same account truthfully shows different cleared figures at different times, and why comparing a figure captured this morning with one captured last night is not a discrepancy. When you record or quote the number, record the timestamp or statement date beside it; on its own it is only a claim about an unspecified past instant.

What changes if the account is a credit card?

The direction reverses. On a deposit account the figure describes funds the institution is holding for you; on a credit card the same vocabulary describes an amount you owe, so a higher figure is worse rather than better.

Capital One describes a card's current balance as a real-time total of all charges, interest, credits and payments on the account, and its statement balance as what you owe at the end of a billing cycle. Pending items behave the same way as on a deposit account: PNC's definition of a pending transaction covers debits and credits to a bank or credit card account alike, so a purchase that has been approved but not processed is not yet counted in the posted total of what you owe. A card figure that looks reassuringly low can therefore be missing authorizations that have not yet posted.