# Money has to match

Field notes / 02

A store can look healthy while finance cannot close the month. Every order becomes a payment, a fee, sometimes a refund or a chargeback, and each of them has to land in SAP against the right document. Reconciliation is where an ecommerce project earns the trust of the finance team, or loses it.

## What I learned the hard way

1. **Bring finance in before the first line of code.** They know how a payment must look in the ledger. Design the order flow backwards from the posting, not forwards from the checkout.
2. **One reference travels the whole way.** The same identifier has to appear on the order, on the payment provider’s record and on the SAP document. If you are matching on amount and date, you have already lost.
3. **A settlement is not an order.** A provider pays out in batches, net of fees, days later. Model the payout, the fees and the timing as they are, or the bank statement will never agree with the sales report.
4. **Refunds, partial captures and chargebacks are the real work.** The normal case reconciles itself. Plan the exceptions first, with finance, one case at a time.
5. **Automate the match and keep a clear queue for the rest.** Most lines should match without a person looking at them. What is left needs an owner, a screen and a daily habit.
6. **Reconcile every day, from the first day.** A difference found the next morning takes minutes to explain. The same difference found at month end takes a week.

Diagram: Three orders, each with its own reference, are paid out by the provider as one payout, net of fees. In SAP two documents match by reference, and the third waits in a queue that has one owner.

## Tips and tricks

- Agree the list of payment scenarios in writing, and have finance sign it off.
- Test with real settlement files from the provider, not invented ones.
- Keep the currency and rounding rules in one place.
- Log every posting attempt together with its reference.
- Name one person who owns the unmatched queue.
- Run the old way and the new way side by side for one full closing before you switch.

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