Line by line through a bank statement.
Two hundred lines, and at every line the same question: which invoice is this? The majority follows a pattern software recognises without fail. The rest, the workflow puts to you.
From statement to reconciled invoice
Reading
Transactions are pulled from CODA files or — where those are unavailable — from PDF statements and bank exports. Date, amount, counterparty, account number and description are structured.
Matching
Each transaction is compared against the open items. A structured reference or an exact amount gives a certain match; a partial or bundled payment gives a proposal.
Allocating
What is not an invoice — bank charges, salaries, loans, recurring direct debits — is recognised by its pattern and allocated to the account it went to previously.
Presenting
What remains lands on a short list with the most likely candidates attached. You choose, and that choice is remembered for the next time the same counterparty appears.
No forced matches. A workflow that hesitates and reconciles anyway costs you more time later than it saves. When in doubt nothing is posted — the transaction simply stays open until somebody has looked at it.
One month of account statements
Today
- Fetch and import the statements
- Recognise the counterparty line by line
- Look up the matching open invoices
- Compare amounts, untangle partial payments
- Manually put fixed costs on the right account
- Note separately whatever does not add up
± 3 hrs per file
With the workflow
- Statements are fetched and read automatically
- Certain matches are reconciled on their own
- Recurring costs go to their fixed account
- You handle the twenty cases that remain
- Your choices are remembered for next month
± 30 min per file
Indicative figures for illustration, not a measured result at a specific firm.
About transaction extraction
Does this work without CODA files?
Yes. Where CODA is available we use it: it is the cleanest source. Where it is missing, the workflow can also pull transactions from PDF statements or bank exports. That takes a little more tuning, but the result is the same.
How does the workflow know which invoice a payment belongs to?
First on the certain signals: structured reference, exact amount, invoice number in the description. Only then on the messier clues — an abbreviated trading name, one payment covering three invoices, a rounded amount. Whatever cannot be linked with certainty is put to you.
What happens to a payment that fits nowhere?
It stays open in a separate list, with what the workflow does know about it: counterparty, amount, date, and the nearest candidates. No match is ever forced just to empty the list.
Does the workflow reconcile payments itself?
Only the matches that meet your criteria — for instance: exact amount and structured reference. How strict those criteria are is up to you. Everything below that arrives as a proposal on your screen.
Often in the same breath
Where does your time actually go?
We walk through your processes together, at your pace. You will know what can be automated in your firm, what it would save, and what is better left as it is. No strings attached.