CASE STUDY
AI-Powered Bank Reconciliation Automation
An automated reconciliation platform combining Azure AI Document Intelligence, Make.com orchestration, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central for daily settlement matching across 22 bank accounts.
Cognic BankRec
Search statement lines…
Daily Bank Settlement & GL Reconciliation
22
Active Bank Accounts
1,420
Daily Statement Lines
98.4%
Auto-Match Rate
12
Flagged Exceptions
| Date | Bank / Account | Description | Amount | Status | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10/24/2023 | Chase Primary #4091 | Stripe Settlement Batch | $148,250.00 | Matched to GL | 99% |
| 10/24/2023 | BofA Operating #8812 | Vendor Wire – Apex Media | $34,120.00 | Matched to PO | 96% |
| 10/24/2023 | Amex Corporate #1004 | AWS Cloud Services | $12,450.80 | Auto-Categorized | 98% |
| 10/23/2023 | Wells Fargo #6219 | Unidentified Merchant Deposit | $8,940.00 | Duplicate Warning | 84% |
| 10/23/2023 | Chase Payroll #4099 | ADP Payroll Direct Debit | $92,400.00 | Matched to GL | 100% |
22 Bank & Card Accounts
Automated daily ingestion across 7 banking institutions
85% Faster Month-End Close
Reduced close cycle from 5 business days to under 4 hours
100–150 Statement Pages Monthly
PDF and Excel tables extracted with OCR & Document AI
Zero Errors Duplicate Prevention
Proactive detection of double deposits and unmatched fees
What is automated bank reconciliation?
Automated bank reconciliation uses OCR, AI-driven transaction matching, and ERP integrations to extract bank and credit card statement lines, match them against General Ledger records in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, and flag discrepancies for human-in-the-loop review.
A Smarter Way to Reconcile Financial Accounts
The Challenge
Manual daily comparison of 100–150 pages of statements across 22 accounts with high risk of missed discrepancies.
The Solution
End-to-end automated workflow extracting statement tables, auto-matching ERP transactions, and routing exceptions.
The Outcome
98.4% straight-through auto-match rate, seamless audit trail, and dramatically accelerated accounting closes.
The Challenge
Finance teams managing multi-entity accounts face severe operational friction reconciling disparate bank feeds, corporate credit cards, and ERP ledgers.
22 bank accounts across 7 financial institutions
100–150 pages of monthly PDF and Excel statements
Discrepancies in merchant batch deposits vs. gross sales
Duplicate deposit and payment detection challenges
Manual report preparation in spreadsheets
High risk of unrecorded bank fees and interest charges
Time-consuming exception follow-up across internal departments
Audit log fragmentation across email and shared drives
Traditional Manual Reconciliation vs. Cognic AI Workflow
| Workflow Stage | Traditional Manual Workflow | Cognic AI-Powered Engine |
|---|---|---|
| Statement Ingestion | Manual download and transcription of 150+ pages of PDFs & CSVs | Automated webhook and email intake with Azure AI Document Intelligence table extraction |
| Transaction Matching | Line-by-line Excel lookups and manual VLOOKUP matching | Multi-variable rule & fuzzy matching engine pairing 98%+ of records instantly |
| Duplicate Detection | Easily overlooked when deposits arrive under different reference IDs | Semantic and amount/date window anomaly detection flagging duplicate deposits |
| Exception Routing | Spreadsheets emailed back and forth between accounting staff | Interactive Analyst Workbench with 1-click approvals and comment logs |
| ERP Posting | Manual journal entries keyed into Business Central | Direct API posting of reconciled batches and adjustments to Dynamics 365 |
| Audit Compliance | Scattered paper files and disconnected Excel versions | Immutable audit logs linking original statement PDFs to ledger journals |
The Cognic Bank Reconciliation Engine
Three integrated modules transforming raw statements into reconciled ERP entries.
01
Document AI & Statement Ingestion
Ingests multi-bank statements, parsing complex tabular layouts and currency formats.
• Azure Document Intelligence OCR
• Multi-bank format normalization
• Credit card transaction parsing
→
02
Intelligent Matching & Anomaly Detection
Matches statement lines to Business Central ledger entries and detects exceptions.
• 1-to-many & many-to-1 matching
• Fee & interest auto-classification
• Duplicate deposit screening
→
03
ERP Integration & Exception Workbench
Enables reviewer validation and writes verified settlement journals directly to ERP.
• Dynamics 365 Business Central API
• Human-in-the-loop exception UI
• Automated reconciliation reports
→
Analyst Review
Confidence-based exception resolution
ERP Posting
Auto-creates reconciled general journals
Audit Trail
Exportable compliance working papers
Platform Architecture & Processing Pipeline
An enterprise-grade, resilient financial data pipeline built for high volume.
1 Statement Intake
› PDF Statements
› Bank CSV Feeds
› Credit Card Feeds
› Email Webhooks
› Secure Storage
2 AI Extraction
› Azure Document AI
› Table Extraction
› Field Normalization
› Currency Conversion
› Confidence Scoring
3 Matching & Rules
› Exact Match Rules
› Fuzzy Description Engine
› Tolerance Thresholds
› Duplicate Flagging
› Exception Routing
4 ERP Sync
› Business Central API
› Journal Generation
› Bank Account Ledger
› Reconciliation Reports
› Audit Trail Export
From Bank Statement Line to Reconciled Ledger Entry
A complete traceable audit trail connecting raw statement items to verified accounting entries.
Bank Statement
→
AI Extraction
→
ERP Ledger Data
→
Rule Matching
→
Analyst Check
→
Reconciled GL
AI & Automation Layer
Advanced capabilities powering the reconciliation engine.
Document AI Table Extraction
Precision OCR on multi-column PDF bank statements
Fuzzy Merchant Normalization
Matches abbreviated statement descriptions to ERP vendor names
Duplicate Transaction Detection
Anomaly scoring across sliding temporal windows
Confidence Scoring Engine
Routes high-confidence matches straight to GL posting
Automated Exception Routing
Notifies responsible managers of unmapped transactions
Analyst Exception Workbench
Review interface for financial controllers and accountants.
| Date | Account | Description | Amount | Flag | Confidence | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10/24/2023 | Chase #4091 | Stripe Settlement #9021 | $148,250.00 | Matched to GL | 99% | |
| 10/24/2023 | BofA #8812 | Vendor Wire Apex | $34,120.00 | Matched to PO | 96% | |
| 10/24/2023 | Amex #1004 | AWS Hosting Debit | $12,450.80 | Auto-Classified | 98% | |
| 10/23/2023 | Wells Fargo #6219 | Unmapped Branch Deposit | $8,940.00 | Manual Review | 84% |
Enterprise Financial Security
Compliant data architecture safeguarding sensitive banking records.
Private VPC
Role-Based Access
AES-256 Encryption
Immutable Logs
SOC 2 Ready
Zero Retention
Technology Stack
Key technologies powering the production deployment.
Azure Document AI
Dynamics 365 BC
Make.com
PostgreSQL
Power BI
Python Engine
REST Webhooks
Docker
Azure Key Vault
React Workbench
What Changed
Key operational and efficiency improvements.
Automated daily reconciliation across 22 bank accounts
Straight-through auto-matching rate improved to 98.4%
Eliminated manual Excel lookups and transcription errors
Month-end close time reduced from 5 days to 4 hours
Complete audit-ready documentation and reconciliation reports
Built for Finance Leaders
Engineered for corporate accounting and finance departments.
Chief Financial Officers
Real-time visibility into cash positions and daily reconciliation.
Controllers & Accounting Directors
Accelerate monthly close cycles while ensuring GAAP/IFRS compliance.
Senior Staff Accountants
Eliminate repetitive manual matching and focus on exception resolution.