MatchPoint / Balance Sheet Sign-off
Balance Sheet Sign-off
Purpose-built balance sheet reconciliation for finance teams who have outgrown spreadsheets — structured workflow, real-time visibility and an audit trail that's actually an audit trail.
The problem with reconciling in Excel
The spreadsheet approach has three structural problems that no amount of process discipline can fix.
No workflow. A spreadsheet is a document, not a process. There's no concept of a reconciliation being submitted, reviewed or approved within the file itself — status lives in a tracker tab, an email, or someone's head.
No audit trail. Who prepared it, who reviewed it, what changed and when — a spreadsheet records none of this. SharePoint version history is a list of saves, not an audit trail.
No visibility. The controller has whatever status they were last told. Chasing it is manual work, and it scales badly across forty accounts, three subsidiaries and a close deadline in two days.
How it works
1. Period opens
A reconciliation task is generated for every account that needs sign-off — due dates, assignees and current GL balances already populated from NetSuite.
2. Preparer works
Document reconciling items, explanations and attachments, then submit. Carry-forward pre-fills the stable accounts so you review rather than rebuild.
3. Approver reviews
Approve or return with comments — timestamped and attributed. Preparers can never approve their own work.
4. Controller sees it all
A real-time dashboard shows every account: not started, in progress, awaiting approval, complete. Bottlenecks are visible without a single chasing email.
Where it saves real time
Carry-forward
For accounts that are stable month to month — fixed asset schedules, prepayments, intercompany balances — the prior period's reconciling items carry forward automatically. For most organisations that's 50–70% of accounts.
Auto-certification
Zero-balance accounts with a clean prior period certify themselves; submissions within an agreed variance threshold auto-approve. Routine accounts clear on their own — with the reason and criteria logged — so review time concentrates where it's needed.
Delegation & continuity
Cover for annual leave properly: responsibilities hand over with a defined scope and end date, fully visible to the administrator, and revert automatically.
Auditor access
Auditors log in read-only and see the complete reconciliation — balance, support, attachments, approval chain — without anyone preparing a pack.
Multi-subsidiary
Accounts configured per entity with role-based access. Works the same for a single-entity SME and a multi-entity international group.
“MatchPoint has been a game-changer for us… a single source of truth for all reconciliations while providing our auditors with easy, read-only access to thorough reports.”