How does Otto decide what to reconcile?

Before he starts his reconciliation work for a client, Otto is shown examples of previous reconciliations for that client. We give him the direction on what information he should look at so he can understand how to tell why that bank transaction matched the bill or invoice.

This initial training only helps Otto understand what makes a correct match, but not how to tell if something is not a match. We create synthetic non-matches so he can make good decisions, but he learns better from real examples. This is where feedback comes in: Otto will record his decisions every time he performs bank reconciliation for a client, and you can let him know if he was right or wrong.

Understanding Otto’s decisions

The top part of the summary shows the information from the Xero bank reconciliation page. The bottom-left part shows Otto’s decision and is made of three parts.

The overall action taken. In this case “Reconciled”
Whether he thinks the statement and invoice or bill relate to the same transaction. Either “Match” or “Non-match”
How confident he is: 98% in this case. The value in brackets is how confident Otto must be to reconcile the match.

What actions can Otto take?

Otto can currently take the following actions:

Reconciled

There was a single possible match and it matches the bank statement transaction.

There is also “Testing: Would reconcile” where Otto records his decision but doesn’t reconcile the transactions because he is in monitoring mode.

Reconciled: Multiple possible matches

There was more than one possible match, and one of them matches the bank statement transaction.

There is also “Testing: Would reconcile from multiple possible matches” where Otto records his decision but doesn’t reconcile the transactions because he is in monitoring mode.

Reconciled: GuidedMatch

Although Otto wasn’t confident enough to match this himself, you told him it was a match in the portal, so he reconciled the transaction.

Skipped: Confidence too low

Otto didn’t think the bank statement transaction and the bill or invoice were a match.

Skipped: Multiple possible matches but confidence too low

None of the bills or invoices seemed like they matched the bank statement transaction

Skipped: Feedback given to not reconcile this transaction

You told Otto that he incorrectly reconciled this transaction in the past, so he is skipping the transaction to avoid making another mistake.

Skipped: Bank transaction is not reconciled but match from feedback was not present in Xero

Otto was told to reconcile this bank statement transaction with a particular bill or invoice, but the bill or invoice had been deleted or reconciled against another transaction when he checked next time.

Giving feedback

You can tell Otto whether the items are a match or not using the buttons. This is always used to improve his performance when he is next trained but can also cause other things to happen. See feedback for more information.