If you’re used to using Excel, manual reconciliation may seem like the safest and most effective option. After all, finance teams have been using spreadsheets for decades.
But Excel is also causing problems for finance teams given the constraints of our present business environment.
Our team at Ledge recently found, in a benchmarking study that we conducted among finance professionals in high-transaction environments, that 94% of teams use Excel in their month-end close processes. The problem is that 50% of respondents say that Excel is also the reason why the month-end close is slow, with cash reconciliation being the key bottleneck, taking 20-50 hours a month to complete.
“Cash reconciliation alone takes 30+ hours each month—and if even one source is delayed, it pushes back the entire close.”— Finance manager, SaaS
Spreadsheets don’t just slow down teams—they are also error-prone. One cross-disciplinary research team, conducting a quality review study of spreadsheets over 35 years, found that 94% of the spreadsheets contained faults.
In our modern finance environment, these problems have the potential to not only compound but to create business-critical issues due to talent shortages, a faster pace of business, and uncertainties in the market.
One of the most critical steps that a finance team can make is to begin incorporating more automation and AI into finance workflows with tools like Ledge. This guide explains how.
Why automated reconciliation with AI?
The pressures that finance teams have been under over the past several years are unlikely to subside. So it’s critical to start taking action, to begin implementing AI responsibility, to enhance speed and accuracy, rather than waiting for resources to free up.
It’s hard to know where to start because AI tools tend to be workflow specific. Not every solution is the right option for every use case.
At Ledge, we’ve built our platform specifically to support finance teams operating in high-transaction, multi-source environments: marketplaces, SaaS platforms, etc. As a trend in the global financial system, real-time finance is growing—which means that money is moving faster. That means that AI is going to be a must rather than a ‘nice to have’ for finance teams.
In the next section, we explore the 10 biggest risks of Excel-based reconciliation and how AI-powered automation using Ledge can solve these problems.
10 risks of manual reconciliation with Excel
1. You’re going to miss something important
Manual reconciliation in Excel isn’t built for scale.
That’s a problem when transactions are increasing in volume, complexity, and speed.
Spreadsheets can’t alert you to missing deposits, ACH returns, or timing mismatches across systems. Most of the time, issues surface only after they’ve already impacted your books or customers.
How Ledge solves it: Ledge ingests data from your ERP, banks, and PSPs daily, using AI to flag anomalies and missing matches in real time.
Our LLM-powered matching engine identifies patterns even when references are vague or data formats don’t align. You get a live view of what’s cleared, what’s at risk, and what needs attention before problems begin to surface.
2. Too much depends on one person
When reconciliation lives in Excel, all roads tend to lead to one person: the spreadsheet expert. They know the logic, the lookup chains, and where the bodies are buried. But they also become a single point of failure.
This creates operational risk.
Vacation scheduling, sick days, and turnover all become moments of instability. It also creates onboarding risk: new hires inherit undocumented logic, not scalable systems.
How Ledge solves it: Ledge turns spreadsheet logic into embedded workflows that anyone on your team can understand. Matching rules are visible and editable. AI learns from historical decisions and suggests consistent logic across periods.
The result: continuity, visibility, and control, regardless of who’s at the keyboard.
3. Audits just get harder
When your reconciliation lives in spreadsheets, audit prep is a manual nightmare. Your team scrambles to trace transactions, document logic, and explain why balances don’t match.
The more volume you process, the worse it gets.
And with The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) proposing new standards to expand auditor obligations, this pain has the potential to increase.
How Ledge solves it: Every match, journal entry, rule, and override in Ledge is logged automatically. You get a built-in audit trail that shows how and when each decision was made. Reports can be exported instantly, reducing prep time and eliminating the scramble. Audit defense becomes a process rather than a panic.
4. Your team is stuck doing low-leverage work
Your finance team is too valuable to be doing copy-paste work. But when reconciliation lives in Excel, they’re stuck reformatting CSVs, chasing reference IDs, and redoing journal entries every month.
This work is repetitive, time-consuming, and doesn’t move the business forward.
How Ledge solves it: Ledge uses AI to suggest journal entries, apply consistent logic across recurring transactions, and flag exceptions before they reach review.
Your team spends less time fixing errors and more time making decisions that matter.
5. There’s no line of defense against fraud
Excel is blind to fraud. It won’t alert you to outliers, changes in transaction patterns, or suspicious behavior. Worse, it can be tampered with—no version history, no access control, no visibility.
That leaves your business exposed.
How Ledge solves it: Ledge continuously monitors transaction flows, using anomaly detection models to flag inconsistencies in timing, amount, and metadata. Combined with strict user roles, audit trails, and real-time alerts, Ledge gives you a much stronger control environment, without adding manual burden.
6. People are burning out
The accountant shortage is real.
In high-transaction environments, teams are expected to do more with less, faster than ever before…and Excel wasn’t designed for this pace. It turns every close into a sprint and every discrepancy into a fire drill.
How Ledge solves it: With AI handling the repetitive, structured, and exception-heavy work, your team has time to breathe and focus. Close becomes continuous. Investigations shrink from hours to minutes. And the job becomes sustainable again.
7. Customer trust takes a hit
Reconciliation delays don’t just affect your books. They impact your customers. When payments aren’t applied promptly, customers get incorrect reminders. When support teams can’t answer “Was this check received?” quickly, frustration builds.
Manual reconciliation can’t keep up with the pace of your business…or your customer expectations.
How Ledge solves it: Ledge gives real-time visibility into payment status across systems. AI matches payments to invoices—even when metadata is missing—and pushes status updates into tools your team already uses. Everyone gets faster answers. Customers stay informed. Trust is preserved.
8. Mistakes ripple across the business
When reconciliation data is stale, late, or inaccurate, it doesn’t just stay in finance. Budgeting, forecasting, and decision-making all rely on that foundation.
One unresolved mismatch can snowball into lost confidence…or worse, bad business decisions.
How Ledge solves it: Ledge automates transaction matching across bank feeds, payment processors, and ERP data daily. AI flags issues as they emerge. That means downstream systems: FP&A models, dashboards, revenue reports—are built on timely, trusted data.
9. You’re in the dark when it comes to forecasting
You can’t forecast with confidence if you don’t know your current cash position. But when reconciliation lags behind, your visibility is always a few steps too late.
And in volatile markets, “a few steps late” can mean lost opportunities or liquidity risk.
How Ledge solves it: Ledge enables continuous reconciliation, updating balances and match statuses in real time. You get an accurate, always-current view of your actuals, without waiting until month-end. That’s what strategic finance leaders need to make smart calls when timing matters most.
10. You risk losing trust at the top
Executives and investors expect accuracy. One reporting error, one restatement, one unexplained variance—and trust erodes fast.
When finance teams rely on spreadsheets, leadership knows how fragile the process is. That undermines confidence before a mistake is even made.
How Ledge solves it: Ledge provides a structured, auditable, AI-supported reconciliation process that inspires confidence. Numbers are matched, documented, and reviewed in real time. You’re reinforcing trust every time you close the books.
The Bottom Line
Reconciliation is the foundation of financial accuracy, agility, and trust.
Excel served finance teams well in the past. But in today’s environment, it’s holding them back.
The shift to real-time finance is already underway. Transactions are faster. Expectations are higher.
AI isn’t a future bet. It’s a present-day advantage.
Ledge gives finance teams the tools to keep up. By automating the most manual, error-prone parts of reconciliation, it frees your team to focus on the work that moves the business forward with better data, fewer surprises, and full audit readiness.
See how Ledge works in real life.
Book a short demo, and we’ll show you how real finance teams are automating reconciliation without IT support…and reclaiming dozens of hours a month with our solution.
