How a Consumer Product Company Streamlined Reconciliation with Cointab

This consumer product company used Cointab to move away from spreadsheet-heavy reconciliation and build a more structured workflow for matching sales, settlements, payments, and bank data. By organizing the process around Side A and Side B records, the finance team gained clearer visibility into what matched, what did not, and what needed follow-up.

The reconciliation challenge

Consumer product finance teams often work with data from multiple sources, including internal sales reports, payment gateways, marketplaces, bank statements, and settlement files. In this case, the team faced several common issues:

• Reconciliation was being managed in Excel, with formulas and manual checks that were difficult to maintain.
• Large and growing files made the process slower and harder to review consistently.
• Exception handling took too much time because open items had to be traced across multiple reports.
• Reporting standards varied depending on who prepared the file, which made review and handoff less efficient.
• The team needed a more reliable way to reuse the same workflow across future periods.

For a business dealing with recurring transactions, deductions, refunds, and settlement differences, these issues can delay close processes and make it harder to keep finance records aligned.

Why Cointab fit the workflow

Cointab is designed for finance teams that need to compare internal records with external records in a repeatable way. For this company, that meant moving from ad hoc spreadsheet work to a structured reconciliation engine with clear steps.

Side A and Side B structure

The reconciliation was set up using the Side A and Side B model:

• Side A contained the company’s internal records, such as sales or book data.
• Side B contained external records, such as payment, settlement, or bank data.

This made the process easier to explain, review, and repeat because each side had a defined role in the reconciliation.

Flexible setup for recurring work

Cointab supports both popular reconciliations and custom workflows. That flexibility is useful for consumer product companies that may need to reconcile standard partner reports in one workflow and business-specific reports in another.

The finance team could map required fields such as date, amount, and identifiers once, then reuse the setup for future runs instead of rebuilding it every month.

Support for supporting data and derived columns

Where additional context was needed, the workflow could use supporting data files for lookups, enrichment, or merging before reconciliation. The team could also create derived columns when a field needed to be cleaned, normalized, or calculated before matching.

That is especially useful when identifiers appear in different formats across systems or when finance teams need a calculation before reconciliation begins.

How the reconciliation process worked

The team followed a structured workflow that kept the logic visible and reviewable.

1. Files were uploaded on Side A and Side B.
2. Required columns were mapped, including identifiers and amounts.
3. Any supporting files were added for enrichment or lookup.
4. Derived columns were created where needed.
5. Reconciliation was run manually or scheduled for recurring use.
6. The system performed structured matching.
7. Remaining open items were analyzed further with AI-assisted review where appropriate.
8. The finance team reviewed the final report and exceptions.

This workflow helped turn reconciliation into a repeatable process rather than a one-off spreadsheet exercise.

What the finance team could review

A major benefit of Cointab is that it separates transaction statuses clearly. Instead of treating every non-match the same way, the report distinguishes between:

• Fully matched records, where identifiers and amounts align according to the configured logic.
• Partially matched records, where identifiers match but amounts differ.
• Unmatched records, where a transaction is present on one side but not the other.
• Skipped records, where a row was excluded because the data was incomplete, invalid, or not usable for reconciliation.

That structure helps finance teams focus on exceptions instead of reviewing every row manually.

Why this matters for consumer product companies

Consumer product businesses often reconcile a mix of sales, order, payment, settlement, refund, and bank data. Differences can appear because of fees, returns, deductions, failed payments, timing gaps, or missing files.

A tool like Cointab helps finance teams manage those differences in a more controlled way by providing:

• Clear match and exception categories
• A reusable workflow for recurring periods
• Manual match support for cases that need human review
• Audit-ready Excel report exports
• Dashboard history for future reference

This makes it easier to keep reconciliation tied to finance operations rather than spreading the work across disconnected spreadsheets.

Support for recurring and automated reconciliation

Once a reconciliation is configured, Cointab can support recurring use without forcing the team to repeat the same setup every time. Files can be uploaded manually when needed, or automation can be configured through email, SFTP, or API-based data flows.

That is useful for teams that want to move from manual upload and review toward a more regular reconciliation rhythm. It also helps when reports arrive late or when a missed file needs to be uploaded and the report refreshed under the same workflow.

Audit-ready reporting and team collaboration

For finance teams, reconciliation is not just about matching numbers. It is also about being able to explain the process later.

Cointab supports that need with:

• downloadable reconciliation reports,
• clear status categories,
• reusable workflows,
• team workspaces with shared visibility,
• and dashboard history for past runs.

That combination helps keep the process transparent for controllers, finance managers, audit teams, and operations teams that need to review the same data from different angles.

Key takeaway from this success story

For this consumer product company, Cointab provided a more structured way to manage reconciliation across internal and external data sources. The move away from spreadsheet-driven work improved clarity, reduced repetitive manual effort, and gave the finance team a repeatable framework for future reconciliation runs.

The biggest shift was not just automation. It was control, visibility, and a cleaner workflow for handling matched, partially matched, unmatched, and skipped records in one place.