Smart Reconciliations – Finance & GL Substantiation

GL (General Ledger) substantiation is the financial control process of verifying that all account balances, transactions, and supporting records across an organisation’s systems agree with the entries recorded in the General Ledger (the single source of truth for financial reporting). It ensures that data flowing in accurately align across ERPs, bank feeds, subledgers, payment systems, trading platforms, and operational systems. It provides the control framework finance teams need to maintain financial accuracy, integrity, and compliance.

Data Fragmentation & Inconsistency. Financial data is dispersed across disconnected systems, creating inconsistencies between bank statements, cash systems, ERP ledgers, and subledgers. High Risk of Financial Misstatement. Many organisations still rely on spreadsheets and manual checks, leading to slow month or period end signoff, high operational cost, and significant risk of misstatement. Regulatory & Audit Pressure. Unreconciled accounts expose the business to audit findings, compliance issues, and reduced financial transparency. Limited visibility into breaks, ageing items, and unresolved discrepancies further weakens governance.

Tightening Regulatory Standards: Regulatory frameworks (SOX, IFRS, GAAP) and internal audit requirements increasingly demand timely, accurate, and fully documented reconciliation.

Complexity Outpacing Manual Work: As transaction volumes rise and financial processes become more complex, manual methods cannot keep pace.

Scaling Through Growth & Change: Organisations undergoing growth, acquisitions, or technology change must strengthen financial control, accelerate close cycles, and reduce risk exposure through automation and standardisation.

The Finance & GL Substantiation solution connects directly to ERPs, bank feeds, subledgers, trading platforms, payment systems, and operational sources, automatically ingesting and standardising financial data. It applies rules‑based matching across balance sheet accounts, intercompany positions, AP/AR, payroll, suspense items, and transaction activity, ensuring every balance aligns with the General Ledger, the organisation’s financial source of truth. Automated break detection identifies mismatches, timing differences, and missing entries, providing a consistent foundation for accurate financial reporting.

Discrepancies are routed through governed workflows that support assignment, commentary, collaboration, and approvals, with strict segregation of duties. Configurable reconciliation templates enable comprehensive balance‑sheet control across accruals, prepayments, deferrals, fixed assets, inventory, and other finance‑critical accounts. Certifications, signoffs, and supporting documentation are captured directly within the platform to meet SOX, IFRS, GAAP, internal audit, and external audit requirements, strengthening control, governance, and compliance.

Real‑time dashboards provide visibility into reconciliation completeness, ageing, exception categories, and overall risk, helping teams proactively manage close cycles. Integrated close‑management tools, including calendars, checklists, owner assignments, reminders, and automated posting of adjustments into the ERP, accelerate month‑end, quarter‑end, and year‑end processes. The result is a unified, end‑to‑end framework that improves financial accuracy, reduces operational risk, and enables organisations to produce timely, transparent, audit‑ready financial results at scale.

• Greater financial accuracy & confidence, ensures balances and transactions match, reducing errors, write‑offs, and misstatements.
• Faster month, quarter, and year-end close by automating the process with standardised workflows.
• Stronger controls & compliance, aligned to SOX, IFRS, GAAP, and audit expectations, with full auditability and evidence capture.
• Operational efficiency gains, replacing spreadsheets and manual checks with automated processes so teams can focus on analysis.
• Improved transparency & governance via dashboards showing ageing, break categories, and reconciliation completeness, with enforced approval hierarchies and segregation of duties.
• Scalability & standardisation that supports organisational growth, increasing volumes, and multi‑entity financial processes.

To discover how SmartStream can help you strengthen governance and streamline the financial close, request a demo or contact our team at smart.stream.