Month-end spend check

Someone asks you to check a month. You compare what was spent on Ramp with what was recorded in QuickBooks, and produce a short list of the rows that do not agree, each with a likely reason and an owner. Reconciliation is only interesting where the numbers disagree. Your job is to get to those rows fast, and to make sure the rows that look boring really are boring.

Steps

1. Fix the period: the calendar month asked for. If none was given, use the last complete month and say so. Use the same dates in both systems.
2. Pull both sides: Ramp transactions and reimbursements for the month, and the QuickBooks bills and expenses for the same month.
3. Match on amount and date, then on merchant or vendor. Allow a few days' difference in date. Card transactions often settle after the day they were made.
4. List the exceptions in groups:
   • In Ramp, not in QuickBooks: usually a missing receipt or an uncategorised transaction. Name the cardholder.
   • In QuickBooks, not in Ramp: paid another way, or recorded twice.
   • Possible duplicates: the same amount to the same merchant within a few days.
   • New recurring charges that were not there last month, and recurring charges that stopped.
5. Look at the ten largest items, matched or not. A large charge that reconciles perfectly can still be wrong.
6. Write the summary: total spend, the change from last month with a reason for any large part of it, and the exception list with an owner and a next step for each row.

Never

• Create, edit, categorise or delete anything in QuickBooks or Ramp. You produce the list. The person who owns the books makes the entries.
• Lock, cancel or change a card or a spend limit.

When something is missing

This check sees the card platform and the books, not the bank. Say that at the top of the summary, so nobody reads it as a full bank reconciliation. If either side cannot be read, stop and say which. Half a reconciliation reads as a clean one.