Is your month-end close dominated by the tedious task of manually reconciling corporate credit card statements? Sorting through endless transactions, chasing down missing receipts, and matching them one by one isn't just time-consuming; it's a drain on resources and a significant source of frustration for finance teams.
The traditional, manual approach to reconciliation often takes days, is fraught with potential errors, and lacks real-time visibility.
It's time to move beyond the spreadsheet scramble and embrace a faster, more accurate way.
The (Very) High Cost of Manual Reconciliation
Manual reconciliation, whether wrestling with paper statements or hand-keying data between digital platforms, is notoriously inefficient. This inefficiency translates directly into tangible costs and risks:
1. Hours Lost to Tedium
How much time does your team really spend reconciling? Studies and controllers themselves paint a grim picture. Finance teams report spending 30-45 minutes per account each month just gathering, manipulating, and matching data.
For companies juggling multiple cards, that quickly balloons into days lost.
Controllers describe it vividly:
2. Error-Prone and Risky
"Everything's done manually", and manual processes breed errors.
Whether it's typos, incorrect coding, or omissions, these mistakes demand more time to fix (one study found 36% of finance teams spend 9-10 days a month correcting errors) and undermine the reliability of financial reports.
In fact, 41% of finance executives lack confidence in their financials' accuracy due to such issues. Furthermore, these errors can mask potential fraud, which costs the typical organization 5% of annual revenue.
3. Zero Real-Time Visibility
Waiting for month-end statements means flying blind. This lag makes proactive budget management impossible and significantly delays the detection of policy violations or potential fraud.
4. Compliance & Audit Nightmares
Lost receipts and inadequate documentation turn audits into stressful, time-consuming ordeals. Manual processes often lack the clear audit trails needed to demonstrate compliance. A bad audit experience, sometimes delaying the audit by 1-2 weeks due to poor reconciliation, is one main reason companies often start looking for automated solutions.
5. Doesn't Scale with Growth
What worked for a smaller company quickly breaks down as you add employees and cards. Trying to manage increasing transaction volumes by simply adding more people to handle manual tasks is often described as unsustainable.
This manual approach becomes a bottleneck, negatively impacting productivity and the accuracy of financial reporting as the company grows. Manual reconciliation simply isn't sustainable for growing businesses.
Reconciliation Hurdles: An Industry Snapshot
While the frustration with manual reconciliation is widespread, different industries grapple with unique reconciliation complexities:
Construction
Controllers emphasize the importance of tracking costs by project phases and cost codes to ensure accurate job costing. Reconciliation involves matching expenses from disparate job sites against specific projects and cost codes, often requiring integration with construction management software like Procore.
Non-Profits
Accuracy and transparency are paramount. Reconciliation requires meticulously "tracking restricted and unrestricted funds separately" and ensuring expenses align with specific grants and donor requirements, often needing reports tailored for Form 990.
Professional Services
Profitability hinges on accurate client billing. Controllers stress that "Tracking receipts for billable expenses is crucial" and need systems that "track time by project and task to improve our profitability", linking expenses directly to client projects.
Healthcare
Beyond standard reconciliation, teams must ensure HIPAA compliance and often need to reconcile healthcare expenses against data from EHR systems, tracking costs meticulously by department or service line.
We heard you and thought to ourselves, how can we make this easier?
How Fyle Can Reconcile Credit Card Expenses in Minutes
Imagine reconciling all your corporate card expenses in under two minutes. With Fyle, that's not just a possibility; it's the reality for finance teams leveraging our real-time feeds and automated reconciliation.
Here's how Fyle transforms the process:
Real-Time Purchase Alerts
Fyle connects directly with credit card networks like Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. Unlike traditional bank feeds that can take 48-72 hours, Fyle receives transaction data instantly for Visa and Mastercard and quickly after settlement for Amex. This immediate visibility allows for proactive management rather than reactive clean-up.
Automated Receipt Matching
Real-time text prompts drastically cut down receipt submission time. Customers report submission times dropping from over 30 days to as little as one day. Fyle then automatically matches submitted receipts (via text, email, mobile app ) to the corresponding card transaction using AI, reducing manual effort by over 90%.
Streamlined Coding & Approvals
Fyle pulls in your Chart of Accounts, Classes, Projects, Departments, and other fields directly from your accounting software (like QuickBooks Online, NetSuite, Sage Intacct). AI assists with categorization, and custom rules can automate coding for frequent vendors. Multi-level, policy-driven approval workflows ensure expenses are routed correctly before final verification.
Seamless Accounting Integration
Once verified, expenses sync directly into your accounting system (e.g., QuickBooks, NetSuite, Sage Intacct) as credit card charges, journal entries, or bills, eliminating manual data entry and ensuring accuracy.
Real-Time Compliance & Control
Automated policy checks run against transactions as they happen. Set rules for spending limits, receipt requirements (e.g., mandatory over $25), or specific category usage. Violations are flagged instantly, enabling immediate correction.
In 2024 alone, Fyle's RTF helped customers identify 11,258 policy violations, saving over $4.6 million through real-time checks.
Faster Close, Fewer Headaches
Stop drowning in manual reconciliation tasks. Fyle’s automated, real-time approach transforms credit card reconciliation from a days-long headache into a minutes-long process.
By eliminating manual matching, automating coding, and integrating seamlessly with your accounting software, Fyle frees your finance team from tedious tasks, reduces errors, enhances compliance, and provides the real-time visibility needed for strategic financial management.
Reclaim your time and close your books faster with Fyle. Schedule a demo today!
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