Work · Finance · Reporting
$2.2M Of revenue matched line by line, traceable to source records
A mid-market operator's revenue lived in three systems telling three stories. We built the pipelines that matched $2.2M of revenue line by line between operations and the ledger, and a reporting layer where every figure traces back to source records.
For two years I walked into board meetings with a revenue number I'd have to caveat. Now the reconciliation runs itself and there's one number. My team's month went from assembling that number to explaining it: why margin moved, which contracts are drifting, what we should do about it. The board packs got shorter and the questions got better.
$2.2M
Of revenue matched line by line
One
Number, replacing three stories
100%
Of figures source-linked
01The challenge
Revenue lived in three systems telling three stories. Finance closed late with spreadsheets, and numbers got challenged in board meetings. The bar was auditability, not a prettier dashboard.
02The system
Automated pipelines
Data pulls from operational systems, billing, and bank records on schedule, not by hand. Each run lands in the same reconciled base, so every close starts from a known state.
Matching and exceptions
Matching logic ties operations, billing, and the ledger record by record. Gaps get flagged as exceptions instead of averaged over, so differences are explicit, not hidden.
Reporting layer
Management and board packs build from the same reconciled base. One number goes to every audience, and the board's questions move to the drivers behind it.
Source-linked figures
Any number in any report traces back to underlying records. When an auditor or a director asks where a figure came from, the evidence is already assembled.
Fits the existing stack
We replaced none of the three systems. Operations, billing, and the ledger kept their own rules and workflows, and the pipelines became the connective tissue between them.
Humans own the breaks
When a record fails to tie out, it is not forced through. It lands on a short exception list, and finance resolves each break against source records.
03The impact
$2.2M
This is the revenue that now matches, line by line, between what operations delivered and what the ledger booked. The number that reaches the board no longer needs a caveat.
One number
Finance, operations, and the board now read from one reconciled base instead of three competing spreadsheets. Meetings spend their time on why the number moved, not on whether it is right.
Traceable
Any figure in any report resolves to its source records on demand. An audit request becomes retrieval, not a scramble to assemble evidence.
How the number got whole Expand
The three ledgers problem
Operations counted work delivered. Billing counted invoices raised. The general ledger counted cash and accruals. Each was right by its own rules, and the gaps between them were reconciled by hand, at month-end, in spreadsheets that only their authors trusted. The build did not replace any of the three systems. It built the connective tissue between them.
Before and after
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| Month-end close | Nine working days, spreadsheet-driven | Four days, exceptions-driven |
| Revenue sources | Three systems, three answers | One reconciled base, three views |
| Board disputes | Recurring challenges to the number | Questions moved to the drivers behind it |
| Audit requests | Manual evidence assembly | Figures resolve to source records on demand |
What the team does now
The reconciliation runs on schedule and surfaces only what fails to tie out. Finance works those exceptions and spends the recovered week on variance, pricing, and forecasting, the work the close used to crowd out.
My month used to end with a hunt. Now the pipeline hands me a short list of what broke, and everything else is already tied out when I sit down.
Next step
Closing late and still not sure which number is right?
Sixty seconds to scope, then a 30-minute call. Bring the numbers that do not tie out, we will tell you where the break likely lives and what a reconciliation build looks like. If a build will not pay back, we say so.
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