Reconciliation without the spreadsheet

Every night we fetch the settlement files from each acquirer and match them, line by line, against the ledger. A match confirms the entry. A mismatch raises an exception with both sides shown, and a missing line raises a different exception, because those two problems have different causes.

Exceptions are rare and they are the whole point. A spreadsheet reconciliation finds them a month later, when the person who could explain them has forgotten. This finds them the next morning.

What it cannot do is decide for you. An exception is a question, and the answer is yours: accept the acquirer's figure, hold the entry, or open a dispute. The job keeps asking until one of those happens.