A statement with hundreds of lines and a single total
At the end of the month, commission statements arrive from each supplier. One is a CSV with a line per meter. One is a PDF with lines grouped by customer account. One is an Excel file with separate tabs for new contracts, residual payments and adjustments. The payments land in your bank as single totals.
Your finance assistant checks that the totals match the bank, and files the statements. Matching each line to a contract, and checking the amount is right, would take days that nobody has. So underpayments, missing meters and odd adjustments pass through unchallenged.
Why statements are not checked properly
Statement checking needs two sides: what the supplier says it paid, and what you expected it to pay. Most brokers only have the first side in a usable form.
- Every supplier's statement has its own layout, and layouts change.
- Statements identify meters and customers in different ways.
- Adjustments for earlier periods are mixed in with current payments.
- The expected figures are in a contract spreadsheet, not beside the statement.
- Matching is done by eye, so it is done rarely.
Unchallenged gaps are lost income
When statements are not checked line by line, missing meters and underpaid lines are not noticed, and so they are not claimed. The longer a gap goes unnoticed, the harder it is to raise with the supplier, because the supporting data becomes harder to assemble.
It also creates year end pain. Accountants and auditors ask how commission income was checked, and the honest answer is that the totals matched the bank.
Supplier relationships suffer in a quieter way. When queries are raised, they are raised in bulk, months late, with evidence assembled in a hurry. Supplier commission teams respond better to small, specific, well-evidenced queries that arrive while the period is still open, and a broker who sends those consistently tends to have them resolved sooner.
Statement matching, line by line
We build statement matching on top of your contract and commission records.
- Statements are collected from email or supplier portals as they arrive.
- Each supplier's format is read into a standard structure: meter, customer, period, consumption, rate, amount and type of payment. PDFs are read with a model such as OpenAI or Anthropic Claude, and data files with a parser configured per supplier.
- Every line is matched to a meter and contract in your records. Lines that cannot be matched are queued for a person.
- Matched lines are compared with the expected commission for that meter and period, and differences are calculated.
- Contracts that expected a payment but do not appear on the statement are listed as missing.
- Differences and missing lines are grouped per supplier, ready to raise as a query, with the evidence attached.
| Check | Totals against the bank | Line-by-line matching |
|---|---|---|
| Statement total paid | Checked | Checked |
| Each meter paid | Not checked | Matched to contract |
| Amount correct | Not checked | Compared with expected |
| Meters missing | Invisible | Listed |
| Adjustments | Accepted | Linked to the period they affect |
Raising a query with a supplier, and deciding whether a difference is worth pursuing, stay with your team.
Month end with every line accounted for
Statements arrive and are matched overnight. The finance assistant sees a short list: some lines that did not match a contract, a few meters missing from one supplier's statement, one adjustment larger than expected. Each has the evidence ready.
Queries go to suppliers while the period is fresh. At year end, you can show your accountant that commission income was checked line by line against contracts.
Over time, the matching history shows which suppliers' statements are usually clean and which regularly need queries, which is useful when deciding where to spend the team's checking time and what to raise at supplier review meetings.
Are statements banked without being checked?
- You check statement totals against the bank, not each line.
- Supplier statement formats vary and change.
- You rarely notice meters missing from statements.
- Adjustments are accepted without checking.
- Queries about commission are raised months late, if at all.