Hell Is...transaction Matching Your Accounts Manually

By Author: sadie hawkins
Total Articles: 18
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The month-end close sometimes feels like walking into hell, matching account transactions manually for hours on end, waiting before you can get to solve the genuine open ones. If you can actually ever reach that point.

So the pressure is fully on, the deadly deadline creeps closer and closer, and despite all of this you still are checking off those account transactions by hand. Surely this is Sisyphus's never-ending task, Dante's Seventh Circle, Einstein's very own definition of madness – who could allow a qualified accountant to such painful hours to endure of checking off transactions?

Though, the seemingly cruel task is a vital procedure in the entire reconciliation and monthly financial close process – not to mention crucial for genuine governance, risk and compliance (GRC). Adding insult to injury, even little, minor errors can set you back a mile, adding salt in your wounds in the worst case sheer hours of work checking the accounts for the missed amount.

And it of course it should never have to be this way!

Automated transaction matching – a gift from above!

Imagine merely running ...
... a piece of software to do your transaction matching automatically every month. The software can do all the laborious and long work of ticking off all of your matching accounts that actually match, leaving time to reconcile only the troublesome or mismatched account entries. The precision of such software that would so much outstrip any manual method would mean the speed of the whole process would be astonishing. For instance, consolidating hours spent of your time doing line item transaction matching into mere minutes.

Well there is definitely no reason not to demand much more efficient financial processes. Particularly since this transaction matching software does actually already exist.

With this innovative software you can slice down your transaction matching time, from hours – maybe even days – to just mere minutes. Documents can be automatically reformatted to work with the automated matching feature, ensuring minimum fuss when it comes to closing the books.

What you should demand from your financial accounting software

Financial accounting software that enables transaction matching shouldn't just speed up your monthly close process and improve its accuracy; it should also tick a number of other boxes when it comes to accounting capabilities...

Spend the time on what you should: In ordinary Transaction Matching you must spend your time on what you shouldn't spend your time on: Ticking off the transactions that match. Instead of spending time on the ones that don't match. With such financial software, you spend your time with only the trickiest of the trickiest matches – full stop.

Help with the tricky unique identifiers: Matching is about having a unique identifier in one transaction that you match with the other unique identifier in the other set. But many times there is no such unique key; instead you have to tediously work it out yourself, by searching for part of such an identifier in perhaps two fields, together with the date and amount fields. You rarely have to do it with such Transaction Matching software

Not one but many against many: They might not be many, but they exist. The occasions when a match only can be done by, let's say, two transaction on the one side which only can be matched versus three transactions on the other side. Transaction matching software makes away with this too.

But Transaction Matching software cannot do away with all. It is the trickiest of the trickiest that you get to deal with. But you are helped here to. When even unique identifiers cannot be made and when several transactions on one or both sides could make for that match, you detective work is still a breeze:

Easy sort, filter and see if their sums equals out: With only the non-matched transactions in front of you, you can sort, filter and with the clicks of the mouse see if the sums can build up.

If there should be a colleague interference: In spite the intelligent functions and your detective work you may need to consult a colleague. With the click of a mouse, all the relevant data is moved to an e-mail, and it is as easy as pie for your colleague to understand what you are asking them for, making you interfere with them, a breeze too.

Easy report export – are there ready templates for quick and easy reporting? Do you also have the ability to create unique tailored reports easily?