Reconciliation & variance analysis

Each period an accountant reconciles the general ledger to subledgers, bank, and processors, root-causes every break, and writes flux commentary a reviewer re-foots — then lands one approval where you sign off the memo.

Saves you ~4.8 h / week

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What it installs

Agents 3

  • Accountant

    Owns the recurring general-ledger, bank, and processor reconciliation, break-tracing, and variance commentary each period.

  • Reconciliation Reviewer

    Reviews the reconciliations and variance memo for tie-out, root-cause quality, and driver specificity before it reaches the human.

  • Reconciliation & variance analysis Quality Reviewer

    Checks primary evidence, domain controls, deliverable completeness, and communication quality, stopping the run when the work is wrong, unsupported, incomplete, or uncertain.

Teams 1

  • Reconciliation Team

    An accountant who reconciles and writes the commentary, and a reviewer who re-foots and gates it.

Workflows 1

  • Reconciliation & variance

    Reconcile and trace breaks, write the variance commentary, review and re-foot, assemble the memo, and approve.

Goals 1

  • Accounts reconciled, variances explained every period

    Keep accounts reconciled and material movements explained on the chosen cadence.

Skills 5

  • reconciliation

    Reconcile the general ledger to subledger, bank, and intercompany; categorize reconciling items into timing, adjustment-required, and investigation; age open items and apply escalation thresholds. Adapted from anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins/reconciliation.

  • variance-analysis

    Decompose variances into price/volume, rate/mix, headcount/comp, and spend-category drivers; set materiality thresholds; write decision-useful narratives; and present a text waterfall bridge. Adapted from anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins/variance-analysis.

  • gl-recon

    Reconcile the general ledger to subledger for a period — normalize both sides to a common key, full-outer-join to bucket each row, classify each break by likely cause, and output a sorted break report plus a summary. Adapted from anthropics/financial-services/gl-recon.

  • break-trace

    Root-cause a single reconciliation break — pull both sides, diff the attributes, write a one-sentence cause, and return owner, expected clear date, and action (monitor/adjust/raise-ticket/suppress). Adapted from anthropics/financial-services/break-trace.

  • variance-commentary

    Write flux commentary for every P&L and balance-sheet line over threshold — current vs prior and vs budget, with the driver sourced from underlying activity, not a restatement of the number. Adapted from anthropics/financial-services/variance-commentary.

Schedules 1

  • Reconciliation run

    Runs reconciliation and variance analysis on the schedule you choose. ## Professional quality control Objective: complete the recurring Reconciliation & variance analysis operating cycle and deliver a review-ready, evidence-backed result rather than merely report that the schedule ran. Start by fixing the review period, reading the current source records and prior run, confirming required access, and listing missing or contradictory inputs. Execute the bundle's full authored method in order, retaining source, calculation, command, or before/after evidence for load-bearing findings. Separate facts from interpretation, apply supplied policy without inventing thresholds, and stop any branch that requires missing authority or an unconfirmed human rule. Produce the complete named deliverable plus an evidence record, assumptions, exceptions, unresolved questions, and concrete next actions with owners where the method calls for them. Run the workflow's independent verifier checks and fix failures before requesting approval. The task is done only when every requested section and quality criterion passes or a blocker is explicit; silence, inaccessible data, or polished prose is not proof of completion. Recompute material figures independently from raw records; verify period, currency, sign, formula, rounding, tie-outs, and roll-forwards. Distinguish accounting policy from assumptions and route judgment to the human. Financial narrative must explain drivers plainly without generic AI phrasing, invented precision, or certainty unsupported by the books. The human retains authority over publication, sending, spend, signing, merging, deployment, and other consequential external actions.

Connectors optional

  • Stripe

    Connects to Stripe so the accountant can pull charges, payouts, and refunds for the processor-to-ledger reconciliation.

  • Paddle

    Connects to Paddle so the accountant can pull transactions and payouts for the processor-to-ledger reconciliation.

  • Polar

    Connects to Polar so the accountant can pull orders and payouts for the processor-to-ledger reconciliation.

  • PayPal

    Connects to PayPal so the accountant can pull transactions and payouts for the processor-to-ledger reconciliation.

Requirements

What this playbook expects to do its job. Task Machine does not verify these — you decide whether your setup is ready.

  • Browser access to your accounting tool — The agent works in your accounting tool (QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite) through its web interface in your browser to pull the general ledger, subledger aging, and bank statements, and pauses for your approval before making any changes. Until you connect it, it works from attached exports and the relevant document.
  • Period-end source data — Trial balance and general ledger detail, the subledger aging or detail report for each account under recon (AR, AP, fixed assets, prepaids, accruals), bank statements, the prior-period reconciliation, and the budget for the current period.

Setup guide

How to Reconcile Variances With an Agent

Run period reconciliation and variance analysis with ledger tie-outs, break tracing, flux commentary, review, and approval.

Read the setup guide

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Install Reconciliation & variance analysis and run it with approvals.

Join the waitlist and we will send early access when the first private beta spots open.

Private beta. We invite teams in batches and never share your email.