Your Bank Reconciliation Agent Closes Month-End Recs While You Advise
The Bank Reconciliation Agent does the matching and the chasing behind every bank rec so your bookkeepers are not spending month-end tracing transactions. The AgentWorks Bank Reconciliation Agent pulls each client's bank activity, matches it to the ledger, asks the client about anything it cannot place and hands your bookkeeper a reconciliation ready for review, while your team spends its time on the client businesses themselves.
What it takes off your plate
Every bookkeeper knows bank recs are the most tedious part of the month. Outstanding checks sit on the list for months because nobody asks the client whether the payee ever cashed them. Deposits in transit get matched to the wrong period. Vendor names on the statement do not match the names in QuickBooks, so every line needs a second look.
When the rec does not tie out, the difference means hours of detective work, tracing individual transactions back through weeks of activity, often for a single transposed amount or a transfer booked twice. Meanwhile, the client business owner who asked for last month's numbers is still waiting.
The cost is the most skilled hours of your bookkeeping staff spent on matching, a close that slips, and client reports that go out late. The client notices the delay long before they notice the care that went into the rec.
What the Bank Reconciliation Agent does, step by step
The Bank Reconciliation Agent starts with the communication:
- Requests what is missing. If a statement or feed is missing for the month, it emails the client and follows up until it arrives.
- Asks the client about unknown items. For a deposit or withdrawal it cannot match, it sends the client a short question by email with the date, amount and description, and records the answer.
- Raises stale checks. For outstanding checks that have sat past the point your firm sets, it asks the client whether to contact the payee, void or reissue, and notes the decision.
- Matches the activity. Using the bank feed through Plaid and the ledger in QuickBooks or Xero, it matches transactions by amount, date and vendor history, and places deposits in transit in the right period.
- Traces differences. When the rec does not tie out, it lists the likely causes: duplicates, transpositions, transfers booked on one side only.
- Prepares the rec. It assembles the reconciliation and the open items for the bookkeeper, who reviews, makes any adjusting entries and signs off.
Then the data work: client answers are attached to the transactions they explain, and the reconciliation workpaper is saved to the client file.
Where the work is recorded
An agent that cannot record its results is a chatbot. Every question the Bank Reconciliation Agent sends to a client, and every answer, lands on the client's record in the CRM your team already sees, so anyone taking that client's call knows what is outstanding and what the owner said. The matches, open items and reconciliation live in QuickBooks or Xero and the workpaper folder, where your reviewers expect them.
The next morning, the bookkeeping manager sees one list: recs ready for review, recs waiting on a client answer, stale checks with the client's decision, and any account still not tying out with the likely cause next to it. The bookkeeper picks up exactly where the agent left off. Clean recs also make quarterly estimated tax calculations easier, since the numbers underneath are current.
What your people do instead
Your bookkeepers review and sign off reconciliations instead of building them, and spend the time they save explaining the month to the client business owner. Your managers see the close on time and can have the conversation the client actually wants: cash, margins, what to plan for.
Current books also mean fewer surprises at year-end, when the tax document collection starts from records that already tie out.
Customer service and client satisfaction are the human job. The AgentWorks Bank Reconciliation Agent keeps the matching, the client questions and the open items moving so your people can focus on the clients in front of them.
One next step
Not sure whether reconciliation is the first workflow to hand over? The free Industry Assessment looks at your bookkeeping, client service and close work and shows which workflow an agent should take first. You can see every accounting agent on the accounting industry page.
See where the Bank Reconciliation Agent would start in your accounting business.
I'm Rachel, the Accounting ambassador here. The free Industry Assessment reads your website and asks how calls, follow-ups and records happen today, then shows the first workflow worth handing to an agent like this one — and what your team gets back. Leave your email and I'll send the link.
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