Credit committees, funders and trustees rarely ask how a report was built. They ask one question: does this number tie out? If the answer takes a day to find, trust in the whole report drops, however good it looks.
What “reconcile to source” means
Every headline number in a report should be traceable, automatically, to the system it came from. For lenders, that usually means three checks:
| Check | Report figure | Compared with |
|---|---|---|
| Portfolio balance | Total net balance | Loan system balance and the GL control account |
| Loan count | Active loans | Loan system active loan register |
| Movements | Opening + advances − repayments ± adjustments = closing | Transaction totals for the period |
Build it in, don’t bolt it on
- Make reconciliation a page in the report. Show each check with the difference and a pass or fail flag. If it fails, everyone can see it before the report goes out.
- Reconcile at the grain you report. If the funder report is by warehouse and product, reconcile by warehouse and product, not just in total.
- Explain known differences. Timing differences and suspense items happen. List them with a reason, rather than letting them hide in a rounding line.
- Keep the history. Store each month’s reconciliation result so you can show auditors that the report has tied out every month, not just this one.
A report that reconciles is a report people stop questioning, and start using.
It is a small amount of extra work at build time, and it pays for itself the first time a funder asks a hard question.
Bring one report that causes you pain.
A 30-minute discovery call, no obligation. We’ll talk through how it could run itself.
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