Resources
Practical notes for the people who run the money.
Guides on reconciliation, exception management and operational controls, written for finance and payment operations teams.
Content on this page is sample material written for this website. No external publications are cited.
Guides, documentation and insights.
Why the ledger and the bank disagree: three reasons that are not errorsSample note
Most disagreements between a ledger and a bank statement are explainable before anyone investigates. The first is timing: the ledger recognizes a receivable on capture, while the bank records it on credit.
The second is netting. Providers often settle net of fees and refunds, so a credit is rarely equal to the sum of the payments it covers. The third is rounding, where per-event fee calculations differ in the last digit.
None of these are errors, and a control that cannot tell them apart from real mismatches will bury the real ones.
Timing is not an error: handling T+1 and T+2Sample note
A settlement that arrives a day later than expected is a different kind of event from one that arrives short. Treating both as exceptions makes the queue noisy.
A timing window allows a defined delay before an exception is raised, and closes the case automatically when the credit posts. The amount still has to match.
What an exception should containSample note
An exception that is only a number starts an investigation from nothing. A useful exception names the expected and actual amounts, the sources of each, and the events behind them.
It also carries a severity, an owner and an age. With those, the first action is a decision rather than a search.
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