In a recent survey of more than 500 financial leaders, 67% agreed that they struggle to obtain a complete financial overview of money movements across multiple bank accounts. 

For financial software vendors, this lack of oversight presents a significant opportunity to providing end-users with streamlined bank reconciliation solutions. 

Financial software clients require seamless bank reconciliation processes to maintain accurate financial records. Real-time data access and account aggregation services greatly enhance these processes by offering immediate and comprehensive access to financial data across multiple accounts.

Join us as we explore why optimized bank reconciliation is an essential service for financial software vendors to offer to clients, and how Powens’ solutions can help achieve it. 

What is bank reconciliation?

Bank reconciliation compares a business or individual’s financial records with the corresponding bank statement to ensure consistency and accuracy. 

The bank reconciliation process involves matching transactions such as deposits, withdrawals, and checks between the records and the statement, identifying discrepancies like outstanding checks, deposits in transit, and bank fees. Adjustments are made to rectify any differences, ensuring that the ending balance in the records aligns with the bank statement. 

Regularly performing bank reconciliations helps detect errors, prevent fraud, and maintain accurate financial records, providing a clear picture of an organization’s financial health. 

 

How does bank reconciliation work in France?

In France, there are currently three methods, particularly used by SMEs, to conduct bank reconciliation processes:

• EBICS:

The Electronic Banking Internet Communication Standard (EBICS) is mandatory in France and serves as the communication standard between companies and banks. Despite its necessity, EBICS remains the least technologically advanced method, demanding more frequent maintenance. Typically, when auditors request data synchronization between banks and companies, they receive Excel documents, necessitating regular manual verification.

 

• Open Banking:

Bank reconciliation via Open Banking involves either banking aggregation or direct connections with banks via APIs. Open Banking facilitates businesses in accessing and managing their financial assets through a third-party provider’s API.

Notably, one of the most significant advantages of this approach is its ability to expedite reconciliation processes. By leveraging Open Banking APIs, companies gain real-time access to their current account data, enabling swift and automated reconciliation. This method enjoys widespread adoption among customers and stands as a stalwart solution in the market.

 

• Virtual IBANs

Financial software that integrate virtual IBAN account services into their platforms can provide accessible payment and collection solutions to their end-users. This service enables software platform end-users to possess a virtual IBAN account, providing a plethora of functionalities, including automatic settlement of electronically issued invoices.

The process is streamlined, uncomplicated, and entirely automated, ensuring efficient reconciliation of payments for these invoices within the finance software-linked account. Thus, while this approach is harder to roll out than Open Banking, it offers a more comprehensive bank reconciliation solution for financial software vendors.

 

How Powens automates bank reconciliation for Finance Software

Powens offers the solutions finance vendors need to offer clients automated bank reconciliations and simplified financial management. We provide two main solutions for bank reconciliations:

• Bank Solution:

Through Powens’ Bank solution, clients gain access to powerful account aggregation capabilities that automatically retrieve customer bank data. In a case study with Dougs, Powens’ banking products helped entrepreneurs pay four to five times less for accounting services

 

•  Bank Advanced Solution:

Powens’s Bank Advanced solution is the only one in the market that enables clients to retrieve important transactional files and data, including traditional receipts and invoices, as well atransactions’s attachments and invoices from neobanks such as Qonto, Shine, or manager.one, as well as Payment Service Providers (PSP) such as Stripe, Paypal or Sum Up, bringing bank reconciliation to the next level.

But there’s even more. Bank Advanced offers:

Convenient Access: Instantly retrieve attachments and data associated with transactions in your neobank or PSP environment within your accounting or cash management software.

Enhanced Efficiency: Empower your accounting operations by effortlessly collecting proof of invoices from your clients’ employees.

Get additional PSP (Payment Service Providers) connectors: including Stripe, PayPal, and SumUp, all with invoice attachments and related data.

 

• IBAN Accounts:

Although a relatively novel concept in the market, IBANs and virtual IBAN accounts are a viable alternative for bank reconciliation. At present, Powens offers IBAN & virtual IBAN accounts to optimize and automate the reconciliation process.

Virtual IBAN accounts are a much simpler means of reconciling payments because they act as specialized sub-accounts connected to a central master account. They help businesses manage payments more efficiently by allowing them to route and track payments in various ways based on their specific needs.

 

With Powens’ data, document, and account aggregation services, you can access accurate financial data across multiple accounts with ease, while still remaining compliant. Powens grants vendors access to information such as checking, savings or loans.

Plus, Powens’ payment and Virtual IBAN account solutions provide vendors with automated payment capabilities to reduce unnecessary costs in the payment system. 

 

Experience real-time bank reconciliation with Powens

Powens is here to provide financial management software with the technology and support needed to offer real-time bank reconciliation. Offering a mix of payment methods, Powens delivers an end-to-end Open Finance and Embedded Banking solutions that financial software vendors can leverage to build new value and efficiency for clients.  

Get started with Powens today. 

 

IBAN and payment solutions are provided by Unnax Regulatory Services EDE, S.L. under its electronic money license (Bank of Spain registration code 6719).