Thank you for your suggestions.

In my case, ongoing I will have to remove any additional characters other than the actual cheque number in order to have the auto match work. I did that this morning and for the first time this year, our cheques auto matched

I understand that version 8.1E has changed the auto-matching options in bank rec.
I explored all options already, and came to the conclusion that I need to format my upload file to a perfect cheque numer match to make the "auto match on reference/amount" work.

Have a great week everyone.

Florina