Can an AI agent do bank reconciliations?

Yes, all of the preparation. An agent can match statement lines to the ledger, explain what is left and draft the adjusting entries. What keeps the separation of duties is the review. Someone who cannot release payments or post cash entries signs off the reconciliation, and the agent never posts the entries that make it balance.

Why is the bank reconciliation a control, not just a task?

A bank reconciliation is how a business proves its cash in the ledger is the cash in the bank. If the same person can move money, record it and reconcile it, they can hide a theft by making the reconciliation agree. That is why auditors look first at who reconciles cash and what else that person can do. The basics are covered in what a bank reconciliation is.

An agent changes who does the matching, not why the control exists. So the question is less "can it match?" and more "what is it allowed to touch while it matches?"

What conditions must hold?

1. The statement comes from the bank. The agent reads the bank feed or a statement file delivered by the bank directly. A PDF statement forwarded by email is external and should not be the basis of a reconciliation.
2. The agent's access is read-only on cash. It reads the cash ledger and the bank feed. It does not post receipts, payments or journals to cash accounts.
3. Matching rules are written. Exact matches, matches within a date window, and one-to-many matches such as a single deposit covering several customer receipts, each with set tolerances.
4. The period is open for review. The reconciliation is prepared before the period is locked, so adjustments can still be made by a person.

What does the agent prepare, and what does the reviewer do?

The agent prepares, at depth 2 or 3: - exact matches, cleared automatically within the reconciliation tool at depth 3; - proposed matches for near-misses, with the reason for each; - a list of reconciling items: outstanding payments, deposits in transit, bank charges and interest not yet recorded; - an ageing of those items, with anything older than the set limit highlighted; - draft journals for bank charges and interest, at depth 2.

The reviewer: - accepts or rejects proposed matches; - investigates any unexplained difference and old reconciling items; - has the draft journals posted by someone with posting rights; - signs off the reconciliation with their name and date.

Notice the split: the reviewer signs, but posting is done by a third role. A reviewer who can post to cash can approve their own adjustment.

An illustrative example

Take a property management company with an operating account that sees about 900 transactions a month. At month end the agent matches 860 exactly. Of the remaining 40, it proposes matches for 28: tenant payments where the reference was mistyped and the amount and date line up.

Eight items are bank charges and one is interest, none yet in the ledger, so it drafts a single journal. Three items remain unexplained. One is a payment of 4,200 that left the bank with no matching ledger entry and a payee the agent does not recognise.

The agent does not post a journal to clear it. It reports it at the top of the reconciliation as an unexplained outflow with the bank detail attached. The finance manager, who has no payment rights, investigates and finds a direct debit set up without approval. That finding is the whole point of the control.

What controls make it safe?

• No posting rights to cash. Enforced in the ledger, not in the agent's instructions.
• No balancing entries. The agent may never draft a "reconciling difference" journal to force agreement. Unexplained differences are reported.
• Bank source only. Statements arrive from the bank feed, not an inbox.
• Independent reviewer. Named, without payment or cash-posting rights, recorded on each reconciliation.
• Ageing limits. Reconciling items older than the set limit are escalated, because old items are where errors and theft hide.

Where Pryme fits

In Pryme, the bank feed reaches the agent as a sealed source and an emailed statement as external, so only the first can support a match. Matching and drafting journals are separate capabilities with separate depths, and posting to cash is outside the reconciliation agent's role scope entirely.

The same approach extends to intercompany reconciliations and wider balance sheet reconciliations, with the full method in how to prepare balance sheet reconciliations with an AI agent. The broader finance controls are in AI agents for finance: books you can audit.