What a certification should contain
- The reconciled position and the date it applies to.
- Every open item with a classification, an age and an owner.
- The tolerance and matching rule versions in force during the period.
- The preparer, the reviewer, and the timestamps for both.
- The supporting documents, attached to the items rather than to a folder.
Risk-based cadence, not one size fits all
| Account risk | Reconciliation | Certification | Review depth |
|---|---|---|---|
| High: nostro, settlement, suspense | Daily | Monthly | Item level review of anything aged |
| Medium: fees, accruals, intercompany | Weekly or monthly | Monthly | Sample of open items |
| Low: dormant or small static accounts | Monthly | Quarterly | Balance and movement review |
The quarter-end pack
The reason evidence packs take days is that the evidence was never in one place. When every action was recorded as it happened, the pack is a filter and an export: this scope, this period, everything attached. That is the single largest time saving finance teams describe when the daily control is fixed first.
We describe what the export contains and how the control works. We do not publish a saving figure, because we have not measured yours and any number we invented would be worth nothing to you.
What the signature is asserting, in four parts
A signature on a certification is a statement with several parts, and it is worth writing them out because teams frequently sign for less than they think they are signing for. The assertion is that the account balance is supported by an identified population of items, that every open item is known and has an owner, that the differences are explained rather than merely observed, and that a person independent of the preparer has reviewed all of that. A certification that cannot show the fourth part is a preparer's opinion with a countersignature.
Preparer, reviewer and the independence question
| Role | Responsible for | Must not also be |
|---|---|---|
| Preparer | Completing the reconciliation and classifying open items | The reviewer for the same account and period |
| Reviewer | Challenging the classifications and approving the certification | The person who posted the entries being reconciled |
| Account owner | The population of open items and their resolution | Necessarily either of the above, but must be named |
| Second line | Sampling and challenging the process itself | Involved in preparing or reviewing individual accounts |
Risk-rating the accounts, so effort follows exposure
Certifying every account to the same standard on the same cadence is the most common way a balance sheet reconciliation programme becomes expensive without becoming safer. Accounts differ enormously in what they can hide. A high-volume clearing account with two counterparties and a daily statement carries a different risk from a low-volume account that only moves at quarter end and is reconciled by the person who posts to it.
Rating each account on volume, volatility, whether an external source exists to reconcile against, and whether it has produced open items before, gives a defensible basis for cadence and reviewer seniority. High risk accounts are reconciled daily and reviewed by someone independent. Low risk, low movement accounts are reconciled monthly with a lighter review, and the rating itself is documented so the choice can be defended rather than assumed. The point is not to do less work. It is to stop spending the same effort on an account that cannot move as on one that can.
The second row is the one most often violated in smaller teams, usually with a pragmatic justification about headcount. It is worth recognising as a compensating control question rather than as a detail: if the reviewer also posts to the account, the review is not independent and the mitigation should be documented rather than assumed.
Late certifications, and what the escalation should be
Some accounts will not certify on time. The useful design decision is what happens then, and the wrong answer is that the deadline moves. An account that cannot be certified should be recorded as an exception with a reason, an owner and an expected resolution date, and it should be visible to whoever owns the close. That turns a missed deadline into a managed item rather than into an absence, and it produces the list that a controller actually needs: not which accounts certified, but which did not and why.
Aged items and the write-off conversation
Every certification population eventually contains items that are old, small and unresolved, and the temptation is to write them off in bulk at quarter end to clean the report. That is exactly the action that attracts scrutiny, and it is also usually unnecessary. Items aged past a threshold should be surfaced continuously with an owner rather than gathered periodically, because a small population reviewed weekly is a routine decision and a large population reviewed quarterly is an event.
- 01Set an age threshold per account type at which an item requires an explicit decision, not an automatic action.
- 02Require a reason code from a short list, so the population can be analysed by cause later.
- 03Enforce maker-checker on every write-off regardless of amount, because the pattern matters more than any single item.
- 04Report write-offs by reason and by account monthly, so a systematic cause becomes visible before it becomes a finding.
Group reporting, and the consolidation trap
In a banking group the same account can be certified locally and then aggregated centrally, and the two views frequently disagree because they were produced on different dates from different extracts. Holding certification as a state on the account, with a timestamp and the rule versions in force, rather than as a document produced for each audience, removes the disagreement by construction. Group reporting then reads the same records the local team certified, and a question about a specific account resolves to one answer rather than to a reconciliation between two reports.
Underneath certification sits the daily matching described in general ledger reconciliation, and the approval mechanics are the same ones described in compliance workflow automation.
Questions about balance sheet reconciliation software
Can we import our existing certification checklist?
Checklists per account type are configuration, so an existing checklist can be recreated as required evidence on the certification step, which is stronger than a document nobody reads.
What happens if an account cannot be certified on time?
It stays uncertified with a reason and an owner, and it is visible as such. Hiding a late certification is the failure mode this control exists to prevent.
Do you support attestation by a group finance function?
Multi-entity roll up with entity level preparers and a group reviewer is the Institution plan arrangement.
Is the audit trail immutable?
Actions are append only. A correction is a new recorded action with its own actor, timestamp and reason, and the original remains visible.