Payment reconciliation can be, quite frankly, a tedious process that takes time and money. It’s fiddly — whether dealing in (increasingly rare) cash transactions or matching data across multiple systems — and is prone to error. So, the more you can use software to smooth the reconciliation process, the better.
What is payment reconciliation?
Payment reconciliation is “the process of comparing transactions and activity to supporting documentation”. The purpose of reconciliation is to check the accuracy and validity of financial information and stay on top of expenditures and inflow.
Reconciliation is a necessary procedure for every business — a time-consuming but essential process for business leaders to ensure the financial health of their operations. Through reconciliation, you ensure your business expenses reflect your operational activities and are in line with your cash inflow. It helps you avoid overdraft fees and give you an accurate view of your business’s spending habits.
What is a typical payment reconciliation process?
A typical reconciliation process has four main steps: Document Data Extraction, Comparing, Reconciliation, and Finalisation.
- Document data extraction is the collection of all necessary documents (e.g. monthly statements). Usually, these documents come from different sources in a myriad different forms, and simply just pulling them together can be a time-consuming process in itself.
- Comparing the data between transaction statements and documents. Data that is mismatched then has to be manually reconciled (stage 3). There can be many reasons for errors, from incorrectly inputted reference data or time lags between expected transaction dates to unexpected fees and charges which alter the values of specific sums.
- Reconciliation is the main stage where mismatched data is investigated.
- Finalisation — where the results are reviewed and checked.
In many cases, the root cause of mismatched data is human error of some form, whether it’s a fat-finger typo or an unnecessary processing delay. Automatic reconciliation of payments data has only upsides — reducing requirements on your payments team to tease issues apart as well as relieving pressure from other areas of your business, such as customer support, to improve your bottom line.
Payment reconciliation with Citizen PayBlox
Citizen’s PayBlox is a modular fintech platform that gives you the technology for secure, instant payments and a great customer experience. PayBlox is easily and quickly integrated with your business — and your existing bank accounts — and we provide you with fully tested end-to-end UX optimisation to ensure you have a payment experience worthy of your brand.
How Citizen helps with payment reconciliation
Use the PayBlox dashboard to find organised and tracked data-rich payments from verified customer accounts, automate your reconciliation and push automatic payment updates.
- Information — The Citizen PayBlox API allows you to add metadata, such as payment references and product codes, to your payments to help make reconciliation easier.
- Reporting — You can access detailed transaction and summary reports through the PayBlox dashboard, allowing you to match your payment records to accounting statement entries all in one place instead of having to compare one payment system with your separate business account.
- Automatic updates — We offer automatic, configurable push notifications via webhooks to ensure your data is updated in your existing systems/workflows as a payment’s status changes.
All these features, and more, mean you can be confident that the information you’re holding on your business’s payments is relevant, timely and accurate — reducing the overhead of payment reconciliation to the minimum.
Citizen can be added as a cardless, account-to-account payment option at checkout alongside your existing providers. We work with many brands, large and small, across the UK and Europe, and would love you to try it in your business.
Try it yourself here and for a full demo or to talk to us about the options, contact us here.
