Bank statement reconciliation: close the month in an hour, not a week

Why reconciliation takes so long

At the end of the month an accountant has two piles: the bank statement and the invoices — from email, messengers and supplier portals. Every statement line has to be linked to a document. With a dozen lines, that's half an hour of routine. With hundreds of lines and several accounts at different banks, reconciliation stretches over days.

And most of that time goes not into the obvious pairs but into the exceptions:

• partial payment: one invoice settled by two payments on different days;
• one payment covering several invoices at once;
• no invoice number in the payment reference, or a mistyped one;
• the counterparty's name written in different ways: “Almaty Logistika TOO”, “Almaty Logistics LLP”, “ALMATY LOGISTICS”;
• bank fees, refunds and transfers between your own accounts that don't need an invoice at all.

Five steps you can repeat every month

1. Collect the statements for the period — from Halyk Business, Kaspi Business or any other bank, for all accounts and currencies at once.
2. Put all invoices in one place. PDFs from email, scans and photos should sit together, not in five different folders and chats.
3. Match on reliable signals: first the counterparty's BIN or IIN and the amount, then the date and the invoice number from the payment reference. The company name is the least reliable signal.
4. Work through the exceptions: flag partial payments, combined payments and lines without a document, and resolve them by hand.
5. Lock in the result. Reconciled pairs are the basis for e-invoices (ESF) and for closing the period. Keep the original document next to the payment so you don't have to hunt for it six months later.

Which signals work best

A BIN (for legal entities) or an IIN (for sole proprietors and individuals) is a 12-digit identifier that doesn't depend on how the counterparty spelled its name. If the identifier and the amount match between the statement and the invoice, you already have a strong pair. The date helps when one counterparty has several invoices for the same amount: payment usually comes after the invoice, not before.

The invoice number in the payment reference is good confirmation but a poor foundation: it is often abbreviated, mistyped or missing altogether.

What you can hand over to automation

The job splits neatly in two. Obvious pairs — where the identifier, amount and period match — don't need human attention. Doubtful cases should reach the accountant, but with a hint: which invoice most likely fits and how confident the system is.

That's how reko.ai works. It connects to Halyk Business and Kaspi Business or takes a CSV statement, recognizes incoming invoices and proposes payment–invoice pairs with a confidence score. Doubtful pairs are gathered on one screen — with the amount, the counterparty's BIN and the original PDF. Approved pairs become a batch of e-invoices in one click.

How to tell the process is working

• The share of payments reconciled without manual work grows month over month.
• Manual review shrinks to a list of exceptions instead of the whole statement.
• Every payment has a document attached, and you can find it in seconds.
• Closing the month no longer depends on the one person who “remembers everything”.