Reconciliation is often the process used to manage a company’s financial transactions. Those transactions may be relative to bank statements, internal accounting codes or revenue from insurance premiums. Financial advisors may also use reconciliation to move funds from the corporate account into individual wealth vehicles. In addition to traditional accounting and financial functions, reconciliation jobs may also pertain to warehouse inventory control and patient medication management.
A bank reconciliation specialist often works in an organization’s accounting department. His or her primary duty is to compare bank statement transactions with those of the company’s records. This process often accounts for all deposits and withdrawals and likely leads to successful cash flow management. Depending upon internal policies, bank reconciliation may occur weekly, bi-weekly or monthly.
In addition to verifying payments and deposits, bank reconciliation jobs may record service fees, transaction costs and earned interest. Scrutinizing both the bank statement and the company’s ledger may also help the specialist identify bank errors. Companies that write and/or receive hundreds of checks each month are likely to require a full-time reconciliation specialist. Smaller businesses, however, may add these responsibilities to daily bookkeeping functions.
Account reconciliation is often used when internal codes delineate collective bank transactions. Colleges, for example, are likely to use accounting codes that individually identify professors’ salaries, scholarship funds and tuition payments. This often lends structure to a large cash flow pattern. Reconciliation specialists may thus compare department statements with financial records to manage expenditures. These positions may also document operational losses, ensure account compliance with corporate policies and escalate misreported items to higher levels of management.
Medical insurance often requires a similar level of analysis with regard to both plans and paid premiums. Revenue reconciliation jobs may therefore balance client premiums with health plan coverage. Job functions may include researching discrepancies between expected premiums and actual payments, engaging in membership eligibility research and providing managers with routine financial indicators.
Professional financial advisors sell wealth management vehicles to external clients. These vehicles are often mobilized when customers pay their weekly, monthly or quarterly investment amounts. Reconciliation jobs may thus balance internal record keeping with investment fund costs. Each client plan must be accounted for, and the reconciliation specialists are likely to research and resolve variances, edit customer statements and track revenue. These professionals may also report unresolved problems to financial advisors and move fund balances from the corporate account into individual market plans.
While reconciliation jobs may be available in many accounting or financial capacities, they may also exist in companies with warehouses. Reporting reconciliation, for example, may pertain to a company’s inventory and the processes used to control it. Once purchase orders are processed and returned goods are logged, specialists in this field may count the number of goods on-hand. Inventory levels may in turn be compared with electronic reports to determine stock accuracy. The specialists may also trace item histories to correct discrepancies between inventory and stock control records.
Patient medication is another area in which goods and quantities need to be closely monitored. Unlike warehouses, which are largely responsible for processing manufactured products orders, patient pharmaceuticals are administered by health care providers. In this capacity, reconciliation jobs are likely to conduct patient, family or care giver interviews that confirm a patient’s medication list before admission to the hospital. If needed, the technician will access a patient’s pharmacy records and physician documents to investigate and complete an accurate medication list. The medical team, in turn, is often notified of the medication list to ensure safe patient care.
