Streamlining your payments reconciliation

At the same time, reconciliation is a fundamental step towards making sure your company is making money and being in control. So, it’s essential that you and your team get it right. Without a proper solution you won't be able to add new payment processors and grow your business into new channels and countries.

What if you could avoid the tedium of reconciliation but still make sure it gets done perfectly every time? Good news: That’s exactly what Reconciliation-as-a-Service (RaaS) is all about. And in this post, we’ll explain what that means for you and your team, and how to find a RaaS solution that’s worth the investment.

What is Reconciliation-as-a-Service?

RaaS uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to reconcile your order systems and financial ledger with those of your PSPs and bank accounts. Instead of allocating your staff to carefully cross check your company’s financial records with multiple sources and in different formats, now you can subscribe to an RaaS provider and let their bot do the work for you—with remarkable precision. This will allow you to free up FTEs to drive value, not checking the records. You and your team will be notified in case of any exceptions or positions that need to be manually cross-checked. Of course you can also define a threshold for exceptions to avoid cross-checking small deviations.

RaaS providers have carefully designed their tools to perform all the reconciliation tasks that your team would normally have to perform manually, from complex data-matching and cross-checking, to preparing documents and analyzing data and reporting the exceptions.

"RaaS uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to reconcile your order systems and financial ledger with those of your PSPs and bank accounts"

You may have worked with reconciliation software in the past, but RaaS is different. It’s cloud-native, which means it offers numerous benefits for your company that traditional recon software cannot offer. There’s no need for in-house IT maintenance, and the service has access to vast datasets even beyond your company which enhance its artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning capabilities. That means that, over time, the RaaS tool automatically becomes more accurate and better equipped to handle exceptions. And since it's cloud-native, it's immensely scalable and will handle any level of performance you need, performing the work of multiple FTEs in just seconds. 

You can configure your RaaS tool to automatically log in to the relevant accounts and your company’s enterprise resource planner (ERP), extract the relevant ledger items and then perform reconciliation. It accumulates and links all sales orders with the corresponding transaction data. When it’s finished cross-checking the accounts, it automatically prepares a reconciliation statement to complete the process.

Is Reconciliation-as-a-Service a good investment for my company?

RaaS is highly recommended for any company that needs to reconcile payment data from multiple sources. If your company works with multiple PSPs or has multiple bank accounts, there’s a good chance you can save time and labor by using a RaaS tool.

What are the benefits of Reconciliation-as-a-Service?

There are good reasons to use RaaS. The right RaaS tool lets you streamline your entire reconciliation process. Here are some of the most important benefits:

1. RaaS saves time and money: Anyone who’s ever performed reconciliation knows what a time-consuming task it can be. Instead of having a team of (expensive) employees spending hours reconciling your payment information, now you have a powerful bot that can quickly do it for you.
2. It’s safer: RaaS tools have proven to be more accurate than manual reconciliation. They eliminate the risk of human error and fraudulent activity.
3. Little to no IT workload: Using a cloud-native RaaS means there’s no additional workload for your company’s IT team. Both the bot and the data warehouse are hosted by your RaaS provider, so there’s no need for additional in-house infrastructure. 
4. You’re still in control: Just because you’re using RaaS doesn’t mean your reconciliation is completely on autopilot. You and your team will be notified in case of any exceptions or positions that need to be manually cross-checked. You also receive detailed reporting from the RaaS, which provides a clear overview of your company’s payment activity. The RaaS simply eliminates the tedious, time-consuming aspects of reconciliation itself.
5. More freedom: With less time to spend cross-checking account statements, you and your team are now free to add more value. Now you can devote more of your time and talent to important strategic tasks instead.
6. It’s always on: Unlike your human team members, your RaaS bot works 24/7. Now, reconciliation can be performed continuously, without any backlogs.
7. Cloud-native: Unlike conventional reconciliation software, RaaS is cloud-native. If you want the full benefit of RaaS, make sure you choose a cloud-based solution.

A world without manual reconciliation

If you’re an experienced payments manager, then a world without manual reconciliation probably sounds like a dream come true. Fortunately, financial software is getting smarter and smarter. At the same time, the financial tech (FinTech) market is becoming more diverse, with new providers entering the market all the time. 

Now that you know more about what RaaS is and how it can benefit your company, we hope you’ll explore the options that are available to you and your team. With the right RaaS solution at your disposal, you can say goodbye to manual reconciliation. Spend less time cross-checking what has already happened, and focus on payment actions that improve the bottom-line and customer satisfaction.