Statement day in the accounts office
Each month, fee statements arrive from every platform and provider the firm uses. Some are CSV files, some are PDFs, some sit behind a portal login. The bookkeeper or practice manager downloads them, then tries to match each line against what the back office expects, client by client.
Most lines match. Some do not. A client moved platforms and the charge did not follow. A fee rate was changed at the last review but not updated with the provider. A payment arrives for a client who left six months ago. Each one takes investigation, and the spreadsheet grows another tab.
Why income reconciliation eats the week
Every provider formats its statement differently and names clients differently. Some show the plan number, some the client's surname, some a reference only they understand. Matching is therefore a lookup by hand, often by one person who knows the quirks.
Back office income matching features exist and help, but they rely on clean data and consistent statements. The exceptions, which are the lines that matter, still need a person, and there is often no organised list of them, just whatever the spreadsheet highlights.
- Statements in different formats from many providers.
- Client names and plan numbers that do not match the back office exactly.
- Charge changes agreed at review but not passed to the provider.
- Charges still paid after a client has left, or missing after they joined.
- Knowledge of the quirks held by one person.
What goes unnoticed when it is hard
| Mismatch | What it can mean |
|---|---|
| Expected charge missing | Income the firm is owed and not receiving |
| Charge at the wrong rate | Client charged differently from their agreement |
| Charge for a departed client | A payment your firm needs to look at and deal with properly |
| Charge not linked to any client | Unallocated income sitting in the ledger |
Some of these affect the firm's income. Others affect clients directly, which matters more. In both cases, finding them months later is harder than finding them in the month they happen.
The reconciliation we build
- We collect statements from each provider through the most reliable route available: email, secure download or data file where offered.
- A parser for each statement format pulls out plan, client reference, period and amount.
- Lines are matched to clients and plans in Intelliflo Office, Xplan, Curo or your records, with fuzzy matching on names and a manual confirmation the first time a new reference appears.
- Each match is compared with the charge the client agreed, as recorded in your system.
- Everything that matches is marked reconciled. Everything that does not goes on an exception list with the likely reason.
- Reconciled totals can be posted to Xero or your accounts package, and the exception list goes to the person who owns each issue.
The system does not decide what to do about a mismatch. It finds it, explains what it found and routes it. Correcting a charge or dealing with a payment for a departed client is your firm's decision.
Month end afterwards
The practice manager also gets a cleaner handover. If the person who used to run the reconciliation is off or leaves, the rules and matches are in the system, and a colleague can pick up the exception list without a week of shadowing.
Instead of a spreadsheet with dozens of tabs, the practice manager opens a short list of exceptions. Each one says what was expected, what arrived and where the difference is. Matches made once are remembered, so the list shortens over time. And the knowledge of each provider's quirks lives in the system rather than in one person.
Does this match your month end?
- Fee statements are matched to clients in a spreadsheet.
- One person understands how each provider's statement works.
- Agreed charge changes are not always reflected with providers.
- You have found charges for clients who left long ago.
- Unallocated income sits in the ledger each month.