How to build bank reconciliation automation

What matters here

• Match in passes. Exact on reference and amount clears most of it; only what survives needs cleverness.
• Keep the rules readable. An auditor will ask why two records matched, and a model that cannot explain itself is a problem.
• Never write a balancing entry. A plug makes the reconciliation tie and hides the difference permanently.
• Age the unmatched queue. An item unmatched for sixty days is a different problem from one unmatched today.
• Propose fuzzy matches, do not apply them. A wrong match is harder to find than no match.

Who this is for

You run finance operations or the close. Bank reconciliation is a spreadsheet exercise, most of it is mechanical, and the exceptions take the time.

How it works in practice

From a bank statement arriving to the reconciliation being done, in order.

1. 1

   Statements are fetched daily, not at close

   Reconciling daily makes the exceptions small and recent instead of large and forgotten.

2. 2

   Exact matches clear first

   Reference and amount, which is most of the volume and needs no cleverness at all.

3. 3

   Rules handle the recurring patterns

   Standing orders, fees, FX differences, and the ones somebody adds after seeing them twice.

4. 4

   Fuzzy candidates are proposed, never applied

   With the evidence shown, for a person to accept.

5. 5

   Unmatched items age visibly

   With their age and value, because sixty days unmatched is a different problem from today.

6. 6

   Nothing is ever plugged

   A difference that cannot be explained stays open and visible until somebody explains it.

Paste these into Claude Code or Codex with the Tray Headless plugin installed. Each stage runs on its own. The systems named in them are the worked example rather than a requirement, and every prompt says so.

Once per project, run /tray-workflows:set-workspace to pick the workspace these build in. Point it at a sandbox first.

1. 1

   First, fetch statements daily

   Daily reconciliation makes exceptions small and recent.

   Headless skills build-workflow

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   Use build-workflow. The systems in play are NetSuite and the bank
   feed, or whatever we run in those seats.
   
   Fetch statements daily rather than at period end, for every account and
   every currency.
   
   Validate on arrival: the account, the period, opening balance continuity
   against the previous statement, and that the file has not been received
   before.
   
   Daily is the whole difference. Reconciling monthly means facing four
   weeks of exceptions at once, each of which has been forgotten by whoever
   caused it. Reconciling daily means facing a handful, while somebody still
   remembers.

2. 2

   Match in passes, easy first

   Most of the volume needs no cleverness at all.

   Headless skills build-workflow

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   Use build-workflow. Match in passes, each recording which pass matched:
   
     1. Exact: reference and amount and date within a day
     2. Exact amount and date, unique on both sides
     3. Rules: known recurring patterns, standing orders, bank fees,
        merchant name patterns
     4. Aggregation: one bank line matching several ledger entries, such as
        a batched payment run
     5. Fuzzy: close amount within a tolerance, or similar reference
   
   Passes one to four apply automatically. Pass five proposes only.
   
   Record which pass matched each item. When an auditor asks why two records
   were matched, the answer needs to be a sentence rather than a model
   output.

   The aggregation pass is worth building properly. A payment run appearing as one bank line and forty ledger entries is otherwise forty unmatched items.

3. 3

   Keep the rules readable and extendable

   Somebody will ask why two records matched.

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   Hold match rules as readable conditions instead of as logic: a name
   pattern, an amount range, an account, a frequency, and what to match it
   against.
   
   Let finance add a rule after seeing the same exception twice, without a
   deployment. That is how the automatic match rate actually improves, and
   it is the only route that does not depend on an engineer.
   
   When a person matches something manually, offer to create a rule from it
   and show what that rule would have matched historically. Most recurring
   exceptions are visible after two occurrences and nobody ever gets round
   to writing the rule.

4. 4

   Age the unmatched queue, and never plug

   A plug makes a reconciliation tie while being wrong.

   Headless skills tray-gotchas

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   Use tray-gotchas, then handle the unmatched properly.
   
   Every unmatched item stays visible with its age, value and side. Sort by
   age and value together, because a small item unmatched for ninety days is
   frequently more interesting than a large one from yesterday.
   
   Never write a balancing entry to make a reconciliation tie. Not as a
   suspense posting, not as a rounding adjustment beyond a tiny tolerance,
   not at all.
   
   A plug makes the reconciliation reconcile and hides the real difference
   permanently. The next person inherits something that looks correct and is
   not, and the original difference is now unfindable.
   
   Handle: a duplicate bank line, which happens; a reversal matching an
   earlier item; FX differences on a foreign currency account, which should
   post to the FX account instead of being treated as unmatched; and a
   timing difference across a period end, which is expected rather than an
   exception.

5. 5

   Report the rate and the ageing

   Both numbers say something different and useful.

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   Report daily: automatic match rate by pass, unmatched count and value by
   age band, items over 30 and 60 days, manual matches made and whether a
   rule was created from them, and any proposed fuzzy match rejected.
   
   The automatic match rate is the efficiency number and the ageing is the
   risk number. A high match rate with a growing old queue is a
   reconciliation that is fast and getting worse.
   
   Alert on: an old item crossing a threshold, a sharp fall in match rate
   which usually means a bank changed a reference format, and any account
   whose statement did not arrive.

6. 6

   Validate it, then hand the rules to finance

   Because new payment patterns appear constantly.

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   Run the per-step schema checks and the whole-workflow audit before this
   touches production. Run it alongside the manual process for one period
   and compare every match.
   
   Then open the same workflow in Tray Build so finance operations can add
   match rules and adjust tolerances in the visual canvas. New payment
   patterns appear every month and each one should be a rule somebody writes
   in a minute.

What it connects to

Statements come from the bank and entries live in the ledger.

Named systems are the ones most teams run, not the only ones that work. Each is an authentication in your Tray workspace, referenced by name, so the workflow never holds a credential. Where we have a connector page, the name links to it.

Questions people ask

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