This post was originally published in October 2023 and was updated in April 2024.
Finance leaders usually turn to reconciliation software because they’re tired of:
- Long, slow, and painful manual reconciliation processes
- Complicated and labor-intensive investigations
- Too many errors in their spreadsheets
- The real risk of material losses
- Zero visibility into their actuals in real-time
- Painful and costly audits
- Employee burnout, leading to high turnover
Automated reconciliation software empowers finance teams at fast-growing companies to handle complex, high-volume operations and scale with confidence.
In this post, we will review the best reconciliation software tools on the market and help you determine which one is best for your team.
The 5 best reconciliation software tools on the market
1. Ledge
Ledge is an automated finance operations platform that provides finance teams with a robust reconciliation engine, real-time reporting, and comprehensive cash management capabilities, all with lightning-fast time to value – no R&D, IT, or system implementers required.
Continuous end-to-end reconciliation
For fast-growing businesses that need robust automated reconciliation capabilities for a high volume of transactions and/or complex payment flows, Ledge supports one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many transaction matching, including pay-ins and pay-outs.
Instantly match settled payments to the corresponding invoice, including partial payments, refunds, chargebacks, payment failures, and payments that cover multiple invoices.
Plug and play with pre-built integrations to 12,000+ institutions
Unlike other reconciliation software solutions that require R&D and IT resources or system implementers, Ledge enables your finance team to operate independently.
Click and connect your entire payment and tech stack, including banks, PSPs, your ERP, databases, invoicing solutions, and CSVs – it’s all the power of a custom solution with none of the heavy lifting.
Automated journal entry prep, creation, and posting
Ledge automates the posting of journal entries into your ERP in a fully flexible way, either by closing an open invoice, setting up a journal entry to the general ledger, or auto-applying journal entries into the GL. That’s even when payments correspond to multiple invoice line items.
No more manual data entry and painstaking back and forth; with Ledge, you can effortlessly keep your ERP your single source of truth.
End-to-end transaction log
Follow the journey of any transaction across all data sources over time, get a holistic view of how different transactions and payments across your stack are connected, and easily pinpoint exactly where things break.
This means you are always audit-ready, and it takes all the stress out of sampling – no need to painstakingly piece together transaction journeys for audit samples.
Manage exceptions all in one platform
Ledge’s real-time notifications and centralized collaboration hub empower teams to take control of exception management.
Identify risks and minimize losses with real-time alerts, manage tasks and stay in sync as a team, and run efficient investigations and resolve issues fast.
Built to handle the most complex reconciliation scenarios
Whether it’s reconciling batch payments, a single payment for multiple invoices, invoices with multiple line items, multiple payment forms on a single purchase, or name mismatches between banks and invoices, Ledge’s advanced algorithms can automatically reconcile what manual reconciliation processes can’t. This enables marketplaces, fintechs, and platforms with complex payment flows to easily automate pay-ins and pay-outs, even at high volumes.
Get set-up in hours and see instant time-to-value
Because Ledge does all the heavy integration lifting and is already connected directly to your banks, PSPs, ERPs, and more, no R&D resources or system implementers are required to quickly get up and running ASAP.
<div class="res-quote-green"><div class="res-quote-green__title">Ledge is best for:</div><p class="res-quote-green__text">Finance teams at fast-growing companies and businesses operating at scale that are handling a high volume of transactions and/or complex finance operations and need to quickly and fully automate their finance and treasury operations without any R&D resources. </p></div>
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2. BlackLine
BlackLine is a powerful financial close operations system that enables finance teams to standardize, organize, and automate many of the processes around the month-end close. It has a wide variety of closing features and complements a team’s manual processes to automate reconciliation and shorten the month-end close.
BlackLine is powerful and feature-rich, but it has been described as “clunky” by users with an archaic and unintuitive user interface.
It requires intensive IT support and a heavy integration lift that usually involves costly system integration partners, so it’s generally considered best for large enterprises that have the time and resources to invest in a long implementation project.
Finance teams that are considering BlackLine should keep in mind that the system has a steep learning curve, requiring extensive training for onboarding new users. BlackLine’s lack of customizability means that it’s best for simple and standard workflows.
<div class="res-quote-green"><div class="res-quote-green__title">BlackLine is best for: </div><p class="res-quote-green__text">Finance teams at very large enterprises with extensive IT resources that are looking for a comprehensive, fully-integrated month-end close finance system for standard operational workflows.</p></div>
3. Modern Treasury
Modern Treasury builds payment operations software with a suite of APIs that automate the full cycle of money movement—from payment initiation, through approvals, to reconciliation.
It has a wide variety of features and functionalities to help finance and product teams move forward with faster payments, automatic reconciliation, and real-time financial data in businesses that have very complex payment flows.
Modern Treasury is built for engineering and product teams with a suite of APIs that require development, so it requires significant R&D and IT resources and a heavy integration lift. Like BlackLine, it has a long go-live and ramp-up process.
Because it serves developers and product teams, Modern Treasury is not flexible for finance teams to alter workflows themselves and make changes to the system on the go.
<div class="res-quote-green"><div class="res-quote-green__title">Modern Treasury is best for:</div><p class="res-quote-green__text">Product and engineering teams at businesses with very complex payment flows looking for a back-end payments infrastructure that helps automate the full cycle of money movement.</p></div>
4. Kyriba
Kyriba is a well-established treasury management system (TMS) that enables cash and risk management, payments, and working capital solutions. It streamlines global payment processing by standardizing payment controls, reducing fraud, and unlocking real-time payments.
With automated ERP integration with the general ledger, Kyriba delivers bank-to-book reconciliation for monthly matching of bank actuals with uploaded accounting balances.
Like most traditional treasury management solutions, Kyriba can take 6-12 months to implement and requires extensive ongoing maintenance with a full-time system administrator who’s dedicated to managing it daily.
Kyriba has a steep learning curve for users and its infrastructure is inflexible, making changes very cumbersome and labor-intensive to implement when the business’ needs change.
<div class="res-quote-green"><div class="res-quote-green__title">Kyriba is best for:</div><p class="res-quote-green__text">Finance teams at large enterprise organizations that are managing highly complex treasury operations across the globe.</p></div>
5. Alteryx
While not explicitly a reconciliation software solution per se, Alteryx has been the automation tool of choice for several Big 4 accounting firms. Alteryx is a powerful low-code, no-code analytics platform that empowers users to make faster and more insightful decisions.
Alteryx has been described as “Excel on steroids” by finance professionals, enabling the user to build workflows that can automate manual processes with a high volume of transaction data.
Because it still requires the user to build the formulas to manipulate the data, it’s generally a better solution for one-to-one matching automation rather than more complex scenarios such as many-to-one or one-to-many.
Alteryx has a significant learning curve and requires training before the user can use and extract value from it. Users also mention that while it can automate the workflows that you build, it still leaves the team with a lot of manual work to complete on their own.
<div class="res-quote-green"><div class="res-quote-green__title">Alteryx is best for: </div><p class="res-quote-green__text">Tech-savvy finance professionals that aren’t ready for a fully automated reconciliation software solution but want a step up from Excel..</p></div>
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Wrapping up: The best reconciliation software for your team
The best reconciliation software is one that automates repetitive, time-consuming tasks and ensures the accuracy of your books. Which reconciliation software is right for you? To recap:
Ledge is best for:
Finance teams at fast-growing companies that are handling a high volume of transactions and/or complex finance operations and need to quickly and fully automate their finance and treasury operations without any R&D resources.
Blackline is best for:
Finance teams at very large enterprises with extensive IT resources that are looking for a comprehensive, fully-integrated month-end close finance system.
Modern Treasury is best for:
Product and engineering teams looking for back-end payments infrastructure that helps automate the full cycle of money movement.
Kyriba is best for:
FInance teams at large enterprise organizations that are managing highly complex treasury operations across the globe.
Alteryx is best for:
Tech-savvy finance professionals that aren’t ready for a fully automated software solution but want a powerful step up from Excel.
