Reconciliation
Every payment accounted for.
See exactly what came in, where it belongs, what remains unmatched, and what is still owed.
Matching.Suspense.Duplicates.Reversals.
- Automated matching across every connected rail
- Reference, account, payer-number and amount matching
- Rules that take precedence over inference
- Confidence scoring with the evidence shown
- Partial allocations and split allocations
- One payment settling many obligations
Part of one system
Members & accountsObligationsBillingPaymentsReconciliationCollectionsCommunicationsMember portalStandingEntitlementsReporting. See how they fit
- 01
What should have been received?
ExpectedEXPECTED$84,200100.0%Every obligation that came due this period, from every agreement.
- 02
What actually came in?
ReceivedRECEIVED$79,10093.9%All money that landed, on every rail, including money nobody asked for yet.
- 03
What have we confidently connected to an obligation?
AllocatedALLOCATED$77,60092.2%Matched to a specific obligation on a specific account, with the rule that matched it recorded.
- 04
What still needs investigation?
UnallocatedSUSPENSE$1,5001.8%9 payments held in suspense. Real money, in the bank, not yet attached to anything.
- 05
What remains collectible?
OutstandingOUTSTANDING$5,1006.1%47 accounts. This is the number that becomes the collections worklist.
Money received and money correctly allocated are two different numbers. Most systems only report the first.
A treasurer who knows that $79,100 arrived this month knows something useful and cannot yet close the books. Until each of those payments is attached to a specific obligation on a specific account, the organization does not know whose dues are paid, whose are not, which balances to act on, or whether the total is even right.
In most organizations that attaching happens in a spreadsheet, at the end of the month, by one person who understands the exceptions and is therefore impossible to replace. Reconciliation in Zetu is not a monthly reporting exercise. It is a continuous operation with a queue, owners, rules and an audit trail.
Five questions
The whole of reconciliation, in five questions.
Expected money — what should have been received?
Every obligation that came due in the period, from every agreement, including installments and one-off assessments. This number exists whether or not an invoice was ever generated, which is why it can be trusted as the denominator.
Received money — what actually came in?
All money that landed, on every rail, including payments against no invoice, payments from people who are not accounts, and payments for the wrong amount. Received is a fact about your bank; it is not a claim about your ledger.
Allocated money — what have we confidently connected?
Payments matched to a specific obligation, with the rule or person that matched them recorded. Partial allocations and split allocations are first-class: a payment can be 60% allocated and the remainder still in suspense.
Unallocated money — what still needs investigation?
The suspense balance, itemized and aging. This is real money you hold that you cannot yet attribute. Reporting it next to allocated money is the single fastest way to find out whether your receivables are actually under control.
Outstanding money — what remains collectible?
Expected minus what has genuinely settled. This is the number that becomes the collections worklist, and it is only trustworthy once the four above are.
Matching
A match you can argue with.
Matching runs on more than a reference field, because the reference field is the thing most likely to be missing. Zetu compares the payer's number and name against registered contacts, the amount against outstanding obligations, the timing against a billing cycle, and the payer's own history of how they have paid before.
Rules you write take precedence over inference. If every payment carrying the prefix MIA- belongs to a member account, say so once and it never becomes a review item again.
What matters as much as the match is the refusal to overclaim. A confidence score without visible evidence trains people to approve in bulk without reading — which produces confident, wrong allocations that are far more expensive than an honest suspense balance.
- Rail
- Mobile money
- Reference
- None supplied
- Payer name on rail
- P. RAMAN
- Payer number
- ••• ••• ••4 118
Why Zetu thinks so
- The paying number is on Priya Raman's account as a registered contact.contact.wallet_match
- The amount equals her annual dues exactly, to the cent.amount.exact
- Her dues obligation is 31 days overdue and unpaid.obligation.open
- She has paid from this number in each of the last three years.history.recurring
And why it is not 100%. The name on a mobile money payment is the registered owner of the wallet, not necessarily the payer. Zetu proposes; a person with authority decides.
Try it
Make the call yourself.
Holding a payment in suspense is not a failure state. It keeps money out of revenue until someone can say whose it is, and it tells collections not to chase an account that may already have paid.
- Rail
- Mobile money
- Reference
- None supplied
- Payer on rail
- P. RAMAN
- Payer number
- ••• ••• ••4 118
This is what the rail actually handed over: an amount, a wallet number, and a name that belongs to whoever registered the wallet. Nothing here says what it was for.
Exceptions
The happy path is easy.
Unmatched payment
Money in, no obligation it plausibly belongs to.
Wrong account reference
A reference that resolves to a closed or foreign account.
Unidentified payer
A number and an amount, and nothing else.
Duplicate transaction
The same money twice, under two receipt numbers.
Missing callback
The payer has a confirmation. Your system was never told.
Bank / ledger mismatch
It is on the statement and not in the system, or the reverse.
Overpayment
More than the obligation. The excess has to go somewhere named.
Underpayment
Less than the obligation. It is partial, not late.
Reversed payment
Money withdrawn after allocations were already made.
Incorrect allocation
Settled against the wrong obligation and now has to be unwound.
Disputed obligation
The charge itself is contested. Do not chase it.
Payment before invoice
They paid early. There was nothing to attach it to yet.
Each of these is a state an item can be in, with an owner, an age and an outcome — so “how much unidentified money do we hold and how old is it?” is a question with an answer.
Independent truth
Know that the money you received is the money your system recorded.
A payment provider telling you a transaction succeeded is a claim, not an audit. It is usually correct. When it is not — a dropped callback, a reversal that never propagated, a settlement that landed net of fees — the discrepancy sits in your ledger indefinitely because nothing is looking for it.
Where a second source exists, Zetu compares. Obligations against invoices. Callbacks against provider records. Provider records against bank transactions. Allocations against account balances. The mismatches are surfaced as findings with a value attached, so it is possible to say how much money the disagreement is worth.
Revenue should reconcile — not merely appear in a dashboard.
| Rail | Share | Received |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile money | 55% | $43,510 |
| Bank transfer | 27% | $21,360 |
| Card | 11% | $8,690 |
| Standing order | 5% | $3,960 |
| Cash & manual | 2% | $1,580 |
Capabilities
What is in reconciliation
- Automated matching across every connected rail
- Reference, account, payer-number and amount matching
- Rules that take precedence over inference
- Confidence scoring with the evidence shown
- Partial allocations and split allocations
- One payment settling many obligations
- Many payments settling one obligation
- Overpayment handling and credit balances
- Unidentified money held in visible suspense
- Suspense aging and resolution outcomes
- Duplicate detection on payment shape, not just id
- Reversal handling that unwinds allocations on the record
- Statement comparison and missing-transaction detection
- Bank-to-ledger mismatch findings with a value
- Manual allocation with a reason and an approver
- Full audit trail on every allocation and un-allocation
Questions
Reconciliation, in practice
What happens to a payment Zetu cannot identify at all?
It goes into suspense — a real, visible holding place with a balance, not a silent failure. Suspense is reported alongside allocated money, so a month never closes with unidentified cash quietly excluded from the numbers. It stays there, aging, until a person resolves it or the money is returned.
Does Zetu allocate payments automatically or does someone approve them?
Both, and the boundary is yours to set. Matches above your confidence threshold, or that satisfy an exact rule such as a correct payment reference, allocate automatically. Everything below it becomes a review item with the evidence attached. Every allocation records the rule or the person behind it either way.
Can one payment settle several obligations, and one obligation take several payments?
Yes to both, and the two happen together constantly. A company transfer settling eighteen memberships is one payment split across eighteen obligations. A member paying school fees in four installments is one obligation drawing on four payments. Zetu records the allocation lines, not just the totals, so you can always see exactly which money settled what.
What if the bank statement and the payment callback disagree?
That disagreement is the finding. Where an independent source is available, Zetu compares it against what the rail reported rather than assuming the callback is truth. A transaction on a statement with no matching callback, or a callback with no matching bank credit, is surfaced as a mismatch to investigate — which is exactly the class of problem that silently rots a ledger.
What about duplicates and reversals?
Duplicate detection runs on the shape of the payment, not just its identifier, because the same money can arrive twice with two different receipt numbers. Reversals are recorded as their own events that unwind the allocations they affect — the original payment and its allocation stay on the record rather than disappearing.
Keep reading
- Payment reconciliation softwareThe same capability, written for someone searching for it by name.
- Cash application softwareApplying receipts to open items, in a controller's vocabulary.
- PaymentsThe rails that feed reconciliation, and what each one tells you.
- CollectionsWhat happens to the outstanding balance once it is trustworthy.
- ObligationsThe other side of the match — what should have been paid.
- How to reconcile mobile money paymentsA practical guide to the hardest rail to match.
- What is cash application?The finance term for the job this page describes.
- Zetu vs payment gatewaysMoving money versus understanding what it meant.
Bring us one messy month.
Bring one month of obligations and one month of payments. We will show you what reconciles, what does not, and what that is costing you.