{"head":{"title":"What Is Reconciliation in Finance? Definition | OceanLab","description":"Reconciliation checks that two records of the same money agree, such as your ledger and the bank statement, and explains each gap. Example, mistakes.","canonical":"https://oceanlab.in/glossary/reconciliation"},"crumbs":[{"name":"Home","path":"/"},{"name":"Glossary","path":"/glossary"},{"name":"reconciliation","path":"/glossary/reconciliation"}],"slug":"reconciliation","term":"Reconciliation","aka":["payment reconciliation","bank reconciliation"],"category":"Payments and fintech","short":"Checking that two records of the same money agree, such as your ledger and the bank or provider's statement, and explaining every difference.","body":[["Every business that moves money has more than one record of it: its own ",{"href":"/glossary/ledger","text":"ledger"},", the payment provider's reports and the bank statement. Reconciliation matches entries across them and flags anything that does not line up, such as a missing payment, a fee that was not expected or a duplicate."],["At low volume it can be a spreadsheet. At scale it is software: importing reports, matching entries by rules, and putting the exceptions in front of a person."]],"why":["Unreconciled money is money you cannot account for. Small gaps grow into large ones, audits stall and customers are paid wrongly. In fintech products reconciliation is also how bugs in payment code get caught before they reach customers."],"example":["A marketplace imports its provider's daily ",{"href":"/glossary/settlement","text":"settlement"}," report and matches each line to orders, refunds and fees in its ledger. Most match automatically. Three do not: a refund issued directly in the provider's dashboard and two orders with a currency rounding difference. Each is fixed and explained."],"inBuild":["Reconciliation in a build means report imports, matching rules, an exceptions queue and an audit trail. It is easiest when the ledger was designed for it from the start."],"mistakes":[["Reconciling monthly when volumes need daily checks."],["Fixing differences by editing records instead of posting correcting entries."],["Matching on amount only, which pairs the wrong transactions."]],"related":[{"href":"/glossary/ledger","label":"Ledger","detail":"The record of every movement of money in a system, kept so that any balance can be explained entry by entry."},{"href":"/glossary/double-entry","label":"Double-entry bookkeeping","detail":"Recording every transaction as equal debits and credits in at least two accounts, so the books always balance."},{"href":"/glossary/settlement","label":"Settlement (payments)","detail":"The point when money for a payment actually moves into the receiver's account, after the payment was approved and cleared."},{"href":"/glossary/chargeback","label":"Chargeback","detail":"A forced reversal of a card payment, started by the cardholder's bank after the cardholder disputes the charge."}],"tools":[{"href":"/tools/fintech-app-cost","label":"Fintech app cost","detail":"Free tool"},{"href":"/tools/payment-processing-fee-calculator","label":"Payment processing fee calculator","detail":"Free tool"}],"links":[{"href":"/build/reconciliation-treasury","label":"Building reconciliation and treasury","detail":"Matching money across ledgers and banks."},{"href":"/software/accounting","label":"Software for accounting","detail":"Ledgers, reconciliation and reporting systems."},{"href":"/software/payments","label":"Software for payments","detail":"Payment systems and the compliance work they bring."}],"sources":[],"legal":false,"updatedAt":"2026-10-25"}