Automatic bank reconciliationand what a person reviews

01What bank reconciliation is and why differences appear

Bank reconciliation is the internal report that compares the bank's balance with the balance in the company's books. It explains and documents every difference between the two ¹. The company that owns the account prepares it ¹.

The two balances almost never match at first. The company learns about some transactions before the bank does, and the bank learns about others before the company does ¹. When the reconciliation is done correctly, the two adjusted balances are equal ¹.

Where the differences come from

Many differences are not errors. They are transactions that one side has already recorded and the other has not yet, and they go away once the transaction finishes clearing ⁴. Others do call for an entry in the books ¹.

Deposits in transit and outstanding checks are already in the books, so they do not call for a new entry. Fees and data-entry errors do ¹.

Transfers made through SPEI leave a trail that helps explain a deposit. SPEI, the payments infrastructure of Banco de México (Mexico's central bank), lets banks and other financial institutions offer their customers electronic transfers in real time ². When a payment is credited, a Comprobante Electrónico de Pago (CEP, an electronic payment receipt) is generated ², a good supporting document to attach to the reconciliation.

02How an AI agent matches bank transactions to the books

An AI agent operates several systems and follows plain-language instructions to complete a process. In a reconciliation, it works in the bank's portal and in the accounting system the company already uses, or in the Excel sheet where it keeps its accounts, without changing software. For the full picture, start with our guide to AI agents for businesses in Mexico. If you are unsure whether you need an agent, a chatbot or RPA, see the comparison of AI agents, chatbots and RPA.

Here is the sequence, following the rules your team defines:

1. Gathers the transactions. It logs in to the bank's portal with the access your team authorizes and pulls the transactions for the period. Then it pulls the ones in the accounting system.
2. Matches what lines up. It matches each bank transaction to an accounting record by amount, date and reference. Whatever matches is marked as reconciled.
3. Looks for the less obvious pairs. It applies your team's rules to cases such as a deposit that covers several invoices or a different value date. It proposes the match and notes why it proposes it.
4. Sorts what does not match. It sorts each difference by type: deposit in transit, outstanding check, fee, different amount or unidentified transaction.
5. Prepares the reconciliation. It builds the schedule with the bank balance, the book balance and the items that explain the difference. It drafts the adjustments and journal entries that apply, but does not post them.
6. Hands off and keeps a record. It gives your team the list of differences with their supporting documents and logs what it did at each step so the work can be reviewed.

03What a person reviews in the reconciliation

The agent prepares the reconciliation. A person reviews it and decides. The reason is internal control: good practice separates the person who authorizes a transaction, the person who records it and the person who reviews it, so that no one controls every part of it ³. The United States federal government's internal control guide, known as the Green Book, names reconciliations and approvals among the controls applied to transactions ³. For a small team, where one person does several things, it calls for designing alternative controls ³.

A person reviews four things:

• The differences with no explanation. A deposit nobody recognizes, a charge nobody expected or an amount that does not add up. Differences that persist or that nobody explains are investigated promptly ⁴. If it looks like a bank error, the bank is notified before the books are adjusted ⁴.
• The cases that call for judgment. A partial payment, a deposit that could belong to two invoices, an ambiguous description. The agent proposes a match and explains why. The person decides.
• The adjustments and journal entries. A journal entry is the record through which the books post a transaction. Fees, corrections and deposits still to be identified change the books, so a person approves them before they are recorded. Each adjustment is kept with its date, amount, account and reason ⁴.
• What the accountant requires. Each accountant sets what supporting documentation the close needs. The agent gathers and organizes the bank statement, the payment receipts and the detail of each adjustment, and the accountant decides whether that is enough. The accountant also decides how each item is treated for tax purposes.

A one-month reconciliation

05How to get started

You start with a 30-minute diagnostic at no cost. You request it on WhatsApp with the button at the bottom of this page. Before you request it, have at hand how you reconcile today, which systems your team works with and which part of the close gets stuck.

The diagnostic does not promise a result. Omni Agent is Bancorp's AI agents vertical, based in Mérida, Yucatán.