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At the end of each month, the accounting team receives the corporate credit card statement. Every line item on the statement must be matched to the corresponding expense record that employees entered into the system. This process is called statement reconciliation — a time-consuming step that nearly every company using corporate cards faces during month-end close.
What Is Statement Reconciliation?
Statement reconciliation is the process of matching each line item on the corporate credit card statement — sent by the bank or card issuer — to the expense records employees have entered into the company system. The goal is to guarantee two things: that every charge appearing on the statement has a corresponding expense record, and that the record is supported by documentation (a receipt or invoice).
When this matching is not performed, two risks arise simultaneously: charges made with the card but never entered into the system go undetected, and expenses that were entered may lack supporting documentation — meaning the company cannot safely claim those amounts as business expenses.
The Challenges of Manual Statement Reconciliation
When statement reconciliation is done manually in Excel, three problems recur:
- Missing receipts: The cardholder makes a purchase but fails to upload the receipt or invoice on time. By month-end, the charge appears on the statement but the corresponding expense is forgotten, requiring a retrospective investigation to find documentation.
- Delays: The accounting team compares every line on the statement one by one against the expense records in the system. As the number of cards and transaction volume grows, this comparison can take days, delaying the month-end close.
- Error risk: Manual matching can let amount or date discrepancies slip through; the same expense may be recorded twice, or an unmatched line item may pass through to close unnoticed.
When these three problems converge, the accounting team ends up contacting cardholders one by one at month-end, asking "which expense does this statement line belong to, and where is your receipt?"
How Automated Statement Reconciliation Works
In Masraff, statement reconciliation begins when the corporate credit card statement is uploaded to the system. The statement is uploaded as an Excel file, and the system evaluates each row in the file against three fields: Credit Card ID, Date, and Amount.
The system compares each line on the statement against existing expense records. If the relevant card ID is selected as the payment type and the date and amount match the statement line, the match happens automatically and the expense is marked as "matched." For statement lines that have no corresponding record in the system, a new expense record is created automatically.
One important rule applies: if an expense does not have the relevant credit card selected as its payment type, that expense will never match any line on the statement. This means employees must select the correct payment type when entering card expenses — a prerequisite for reconciliation to work.
Because statement formats can vary from bank to bank, the system includes a field-mapping feature: any three columns in the uploaded Excel file can be mapped to the Credit Card ID, Amount, and Date fields, regardless of their column headers. For foreign-currency expenses, the exchange rate column is also defined in addition to these three required fields. This flexibility means that regardless of which bank's statement is being used, it can be uploaded to the system once the correct field mapping is configured.
Expense photo capture also works independently of the reconciliation process: a user can photograph and upload an expense to the system before or after the statement is uploaded. Every time an expense is uploaded or updated, the system re-checks whether it matches a statement line item.
The Process of Matching Corporate Card Expenses to Statements
The end-to-end process works as follows:
- An expense is made: The employee makes a purchase with the corporate card and selects the relevant card as the payment type when entering the expense in the system.
- The month-end statement is uploaded: The statement received from the bank or card issuer is uploaded to Masraff in Excel format.
- Automatic matching runs: The system compares each statement line against existing expenses using Credit Card ID, date, and amount. Matches are flagged; for unmatched lines, expense records are created automatically.
- Missing documentation is tracked: Users with accounting permissions can see how many statement line items have received documentation and how many are still outstanding.
- Notifications are sent: Once the statement is uploaded and automatic expenses are created, the relevant employees receive a notification to upload documentation for those expenses.
This flow replaces the manual, line-by-line search through the statement by the accounting team, and makes it possible to track missing documentation from a single screen within the system.
Frequently Asked Questions
Our statement comes from a different bank each month — is that a problem? No. Thanks to the field-mapping feature, any three columns in the uploaded Excel file can be mapped to the Credit Card ID, Amount, and Date fields, regardless of column headers. This ensures that any statement containing Credit Card ID, date, and amount information can be uploaded to the system after the correct mapping is configured.
Why isn't an expense matching the statement? The most common reason is that the relevant credit card was not selected as the payment type on the expense. If no card is selected, a match will never occur. A date or amount that does not exactly match the corresponding statement line will also prevent a match.
How do foreign-currency card expenses get matched? In addition to the three required fields (Credit Card ID, Amount, Date), the exchange rate field must also be defined during the statement upload for foreign-currency expenses.
Who tracks missing documentation, and how? Users with accounting permissions can see within the system how many statement line items have received documentation and how many are still missing. Additionally, employees whose automatic expenses were created receive a notification to upload the required documentation.
Can I capture a receipt photo before the statement is uploaded? Yes. A receipt photo can be captured before or after the statement is uploaded; the system re-checks matching against statement line items every time an expense is updated.
Conclusion
Statement reconciliation is a mandatory month-end control step for every company using corporate credit cards. Rather than performing this check manually in Excel, delegating it to a system that automatically matches by Credit Card ID, date, and amount systematically reduces the risk of missing receipts, delays, and errors.
To explore how Masraff's Statement Reconciliation feature works with your corporate card expenses, visit the Corporate Card Statement Reconciliation page.