--- title: "Credit card reconciliation with AI" description: "What reconciling by hand costs, what the error that reaches the balance costs, and what an agent does at each step of the monthly close." url: https://studiochat.io/blog/conciliacion-de-tarjetas locale: en translations: { es: https://studiochat.io/es/blog/conciliacion-de-tarjetas.md, pt: https://studiochat.io/pt/blog/conciliacion-de-tarjetas.md } site: https://studiochat.io --- [ Back to blog](/blog) Reconciling cards is work everybody understands and nobody has drawn. The journey is always the same. Somebody logs into the processor's portal and downloads the settlement. Logs into the bank and downloads the statement. Exports the receipts from the sales system. Opens a spreadsheet and starts matching. What matches, matches. What does not has to be looked at one by one until the reason is clear, the supporting document has to be found, the entry has to be built, and where it applies, the processor has to be written to. Four screens, one intermediate spreadsheet, and a deadline that does not move. ## [The cost isn't the matching, it's what happens when the close gets tight](#the-cost-isnt-the-matching-its-what-happens-when-the-close-gets-tight) Looked at step by step, matching is the cheap part: once the three files are in the same spreadsheet, pairing by authorization number is mechanical. The expensive part comes after, and the genuinely expensive part is what happens when there is no time. Because the close lasts the same number of days every month while transactions keep growing. When the work does not fit, nobody asks for an extension: what gives is the detail. Differences closed against a suspense account with no explanation. Disputes with the processor that never get written because assembling the evidence takes longer than the money being claimed. Classifications made from memory, which is when the ones that later have to be corrected in the balance appear. That is the expensive error: not the one caught during the close, but the one carried into the next period. ## [The same close, today and with an agent](#the-same-close-today-and-with-an-agent) Below is the whole journey, twice. On top, one person going from one portal to the next, one at a time. Underneath, the agent reaching all four sources at once. A month of reconciliation, end to end * the agent does it * a person does it * always a person the steps of the close * the agent does itDownload the month's three files Processor Logs into each portal, downloads settlement and statement, exports receipts and leaves them in the same format every month. * the agent does itMatch the three sources ERP Pairs receipt, settlement and statement by authorization number and date, and closes everything that reconciles on its own. * the agent does itClassify each difference ERP Places each difference in one of the five known causes (fee, installments, chargeback, withholding, date) and attaches the evidence behind that classification. * the agent does itFind the document that explains it Receipts Goes and fetches the original receipt, the credit note or the bank movement, instead of somebody hunting for it by hand. * the agent does itPropose the journal entry ERP Leaves the entry built against the right account, ready for somebody to approve. * the agent does itDraft the dispute to the processor Processor Writes the dispute with the transaction detail and the evidence attached, which is what does not get done today for lack of time. * always a personAccept, dispute or adjust ERP A person decides, but on differences already explained and with the dispute already written. It stops being a project and becomes a yes or a no. Differences a month that need explaining: 300 Minutes one difference takes to explain today: 14.0 Hourly cost of whoever reconciles: USD 12 Share closed badly that surfaces later: 4% What fixing that in the balance costs: USD 40 Today that is 70 hours a month and 12 differences closed badly. Between the time and the corrections, USD 1,320 a month. With the agent holding 6 of the 6 steps, 4 hours and USD 66 are left. The difference is USD 1,254 a month, USD 15,048 a year. And 36% of that difference is not time: it is the badly closed differences that stop reaching the balance. Of what a person still does, the heaviest step is: Accept, dispute or adjust. You set all five numbers. How the minutes split across steps is ours, taken from how it gets done by hand. The modelling assumption, worth arguing with: an error born of matching by hand falls in the same proportion as that matching stops being manual. It is worth switching off the dispute step and watching the number. It barely moves the hours, because today that step does not happen. That is the part of the return that appears in no savings calculation: what gets recovered when disputing stops being a project. This object also has [a page of its own](/card-reconciliation-with-an-agent), in case you want to send just that. ## [What the agent does that a person cannot](#what-the-agent-does-that-a-person-cannot) **It works every difference, not the ones that fit in the close.** A person prioritizes by amount because there is no time. An agent classifies them all, including the eighty peso ones that add up to twelve thousand a year. **It finds the evidence while it classifies.** The classification and the proof behind it come out in the same move, and that is what turns the dispute into an email instead of an investigation. **It does not get tired on day four.** Reconciliation error is not evenly spread: it concentrates at the end, when the close gets tight. An agent reconciles the last difference with the same care as the first. ## [What stays with a person](#what-stays-with-a-person) Accepting a difference, disputing it or adjusting it in the books. Those are decisions with consequences and no system makes them. And one more category is worth excluding from the start: the difference that fits none of the known causes. That one has to reach a person without the agent attempting an explanation, because an invented explanation for an odd difference looks enough like a good one that somebody approves it without looking. ## [How it gets implemented](#how-it-gets-implemented) First the matching and the classification, in suggestion mode: the agent leaves everything classified and a person reviews. One full close is enough to measure what share of classifications gets confirmed unchanged. Second the evidence hunt and the dispute drafting, which is the highest return stretch and the lowest risk, because nothing is sent without approval. Third the journal entry, which goes last because writing into the books is the most expensive thing to get wrong. Only one thing has to be in order first: the three documents arriving in a stable format, with an identifier that crosses all three. If the settlement is downloaded by hand and sometimes arrives as a PDF, that gets solved first. ## [How it gets measured](#how-it-gets-measured) In the first month, what share of the agent's classifications was confirmed unchanged. That tells you whether the rules are written correctly. In the second, how many days pass between the month ending and reconciliation being closed. And from the third, how many differences were actually disputed with the processor. That number usually starts near zero, and it is the part of the return that was not in the hours calculation. Frequently asked questions ### What does an AI agent do in card reconciliation? It downloads the month's three files, matches receipt, settlement and statement by authorization number, closes everything that reconciles on its own, classifies each remaining difference into one of the five known causes with the evidence attached, proposes the journal entry, and drafts the dispute to the processor ready to send. What it does not do is accept, dispute or adjust, which are a person's decisions. ### What does a reconciliation error cost? It depends where it is caught. A misclassified difference corrected in the same close costs minutes. The same difference carried into the balance costs reopening a period, redoing an entry and explaining it. That is why the cost of manual reconciliation is not the hours: it is the hours plus the errors those hours produce when the close gets tight. ### Why is the close the bottleneck rather than the volume? Because transaction volume grows with sales and the closing days are always the same. The hours reconciliation demands grow; the hours available do not. There comes a point where the work does not fit, and what gives is not the deadline: it is the detail the reconciliation gets done in. Share [ X](https://x.com/intent/post?text=Card%20reconciliation%3A%20three%20documents%2C%20four%20screens%20and%20a%20close%20that%20doesn't%20wait&url=https%3A%2F%2Fstudiochat.io%2Fblog%2Fconciliacion-de-tarjetas) [ LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstudiochat.io%2Fblog%2Fconciliacion-de-tarjetas) [ WhatsApp](https://wa.me/?text=Card%20reconciliation%3A%20three%20documents%2C%20four%20screens%20and%20a%20close%20that%20doesn't%20wait%20https%3A%2F%2Fstudiochat.io%2Fblog%2Fconciliacion-de-tarjetas)Copy link Ignacio Puig Moreno Ignacio Puig Moreno · Co-founder · Business, StudioChat Want agents like these working for your team? [Talk to us now](https://cal.com/studiochat)