Reconciliation
The Sunday-night receipt stack, retired.
The nightly receipts reconcile the bookkeeping loop fires before midnight every evening — matching the day’s mail, the POS export, and the processor statement against the costing ledger line by line, refund offsets and tip lines and chargebacks included — so the morning the operator opens the books, the receipts have already closed themselves. The full wire-once beat is on /how-it-works; the Starter tier is where the nightly receipts reconcile ships first.
The Sunday-night receipt-stack backlog.
There is another tax small operators pay — one the bookkeeping books won’t show on a trial balance, but the operator’s Sunday-night hours carry all the same. It is paid in three open tabs and a stack of paper slips: the day’s mail on the left monitor, the POS export on the right, the processor statement in the second browser window, and the paper slips the scanner was supposed to OCR last week in a stack on the corner of the desk — the operator hand-matches each receipt against the costing ledger, threads a refund against the order it voids, splits a tip batch the POS logged as one line but the ledger read as four, and writes the day’s net into a closing entry that has to close before the books go out in the morning.
The number is right about eighty percent of the time. The other twenty percent it’s wrong by enough that a chargeback the operator missed closes a week against an entry that was never written — the refund the merchant portal credited against the wrong order, the tip batch the POS export split differently than the costing ledger was reading, the mail receipt that arrived the next morning sitting unopened on a doormat the loop never saw. The books the CPA opens on Monday carry a phantom figure the operator wrote into a closing entry to balance the day, and the per-receipt trail the audit asks for, when it asks for it, is a week-long reconstruct from old slips and half-reconciled statements.
By the next Sunday the operator is reconciling four feeds against the same costing-ledger row — the mail, the POS export, the processor statement, the bank ledger — re-checking each against the per-day batch the processor posted on Tuesday but the bank cleared on Wednesday, in case a chargeback moved a number between the closing entry and now. The hours are paid in an unscheduled Sunday, a missed family dinner, the quiet panic an audit letter carries when it lands on a Wednesday morning asking for the per-receipt trail the operator closed by hand and stopped being able to read by Monday.
That tax — the one four feeds publish a daily net for, the one the bookkeeping books already carry as a line item in the period close, the one the operator rebuilds by hand on the Sunday before the books go out — is the one Stillpost built the nightly receipts reconcile to retire. Same four feeds. Same costing ledger. A read-only connect per source, one wire-up. The day’s mail, the day’s POS export, and the day’s processor statement are matched line by line against the costing ledger before midnight, every night — refund offsets, tip lines, chargebacks that landed on Tuesday’s statement but Wednesday’s bank held on their own row, surfaced in the day’s file as a gap rather than inferred to balance. The morning the operator opens the books is the morning the loop closed last night, not the stack the operator was going to spend Sunday evening working through by hand.
That is the beat. That is the loop. That is what gets handed back.
What the reconcile does on a before-midnight pull.
Three beats the nightly receipts reconcile runs before it writes the day’s file — in the order the loop fires them. Match the day, flag the gap, close the file. Each beat folds into the next, and the per-receipt trail the operator opens in the morning is the per-receipt trail the loop wrote last night, not the trail the operator rebuilt Sunday afternoon from old slips and half-reconciled statements.
- Step one01/03
Match the day.
Mail, the POS export, and the day’s processor statement get folded against the costing ledger the loop already carries — receipt against receipt, refund against the order it voids, tip line against the batch it left against — and the per-receipt match lands on the same row the seller’s invoice already carries, so the difference, where there is one, is a single line the operator opens rather than a re-keyed stack.
- Step two02/03
Flag the gap.
A receipt missing from the mail, a chargeback that landed on Tuesday’s statement but Wednesday’s bank, a tip batch the POS export logged as a single line but the costing ledger reads as four — the loop surfaces each gap on the row it lives on, holds the line from being inferred to balance, and writes the gap into the day’s reconciliation file with the per-source trail the operator can trace back without rebuilding the day by hand.
- Step three03/03
Close the day’s file.
The reconciliation file lands at /app before midnight — the day’s net, the gap list, the per-source match trail threaded to the receipt, the order, the batch, the bank line — and the morning the operator opens the laptop, the inbox is the inbox the loop closed last night, not the stack the operator was going to work through on a Sunday.
What it earns its keep on.
Three returns the nightly receipts reconcile ships, measured the way an operator measures them — a morning the stack is already closed, gaps surfaced rather than inferred to balance, a per-receipt audit trail the loop writes rather than the operator rebuilds on a Sunday afternoon.
A morning the stack is already closed.
The Sunday-night ritual of opening the mail, the POS export, and the processor statement to hand-match receipts against the costing ledger is a ritual the loop retired. The Sunday that used to close the books is the Sunday the operator spent somewhere else.
Gaps surfaced, never inferred.
A missing receipt, a chargeback off by a day, a tip batch the POS split four ways — every gap lands on its own row in the day’s file, held from being guessed to balance. The CPA who opens the books on Monday sees what the loop couldn’t match and why, line by line, not a phantom figure the operator wrote into a closing entry.
A per-receipt audit trail.
Every receipt the loop closed against is timestamped, threaded to the original invoice, and bound to the per-source match — mail, POS export, processor statement, bank — so the trail the auditor or the CPA opens on Monday is the trail the loop wrote last night, not the trail the operator rebuilt Sunday afternoon.
The five questions operators ask before they wire it up.
What exactly gets reconciled, when the before-midnight pull fires, what happens when a receipt is missing, what happens when one mismatches — refund, chargeback, tip batch — and how an operator pauses or holds the nightly run — straight answers, before the wire-once walk starts. The FAQPage-structured-data block above carries the same questions in a machine-readable shape Google reads directly.
What exactly gets reconciled, and against what?
Four feeds, one ledger. The day’s receipts — mail, the POS export, the email-scanned paper the loop OCRs into the costing ledger — get folded line by line against the same ledger the cash-flow watch and the weekly margin digest read; the day’s processor statement lands as the third source; the day’s bank ledger closes the match. Refund offsets, tip lines, chargebacks that landed on Tuesday’s statement but Wednesday’s bank are held against their own row rather than swallowed into a closing entry. The output the loop drops into the operator’s morning is a single reconciliation file, not three statements the operator opens side by side — the day’s net already computed, the gap list already isolated, the per-source trail already threaded to the receipt the operator can audit without re-keying a stack on a Sunday. Anything still missing at midnight lands in the file as an open row, not an inferred number.
When does the nightly reconcile actually fire?
Before midnight, every night — the cadence the wire-once walk names is the cadence the loop ships. The reconcile reads the day’s processor statement once the statement closes (typically 23:30 local time, occasionally later on weekends when a card network batch is still in flight), folds the day’s POS export against the same window, scans the mail for any receipts the loop picked up after the till closed, and writes the day’s reconciliation file before the operator opens the laptop the next morning. The cadence isn’t a poll-every-hour background job — it’s a deliberate answer to the question "how late can the receipt match run before the morning the operator opens the books finds a stack instead of a file?" The wrong day, a holiday-week, a processor batch that lands on the wrong Sunday: the loop holds the match, logs the hold, and writes the file the moment the source lands — never a half-matched number, never an inferred close.
What happens when a receipt is missing from the day?
The loop holds the line and surfaces it. A receipt the mail did not deliver, a paper slip that didn’t make it to the scanner, a POS line that the export truncated — the row lands in the day’s reconciliation file as an open gap, kept separate from the per-source trail the loop already matched, never inferred to balance the day’s net. The morning the operator opens the inbox, the gap carries the source it was missing from — the mail subject, the POS line, the slip image — so the operator decides whether to look up the line or write the gap into the books as an open item. When the missing receipt arrives the next morning — the mail throughput, the paper slip that turned up under a till, the POS export the operator re-ran — the loop picks it up on the next reconcile and folds it against the prior day’s open line, posting the match to the original gap row, not against a new ledger line. The audit trail the CPA opens on Monday shows the open row, the matching row, and the per-day reconciliation the loop eventually wrote.
What happens when a receipt mismatches — a refund, a chargeback, a tip batch the POS split four ways?
The mismatch lands on its own row, threaded to the receipt the loop was matching against. A refund posts as a credit against the order it voided, with the order number and the receipt number attached; a chargeback that landed on Tuesday’s statement but Wednesday’s bank lands under both dates, with the statement line and the bank line carried separately so the books-open on Monday reads the difference as a timing gap rather than a phantom loss; a tip batch the POS export logged as one line but the costing ledger reads as four gets split on the reconcile, with the four tip rows carrying the source the costing ledger was reading from. A mismatch is never an inferred number — the operator opens the file the next morning and sees the gap explained, not hidden. The contact page routes a stuck mismatch (a refund the merchant portal never credited, a chargeback the bank statement mis-tagged, a tip batch the POS export never split) to the team within one business day, and the rest of the bookkeeping keeps running on the rows the loop did match while the gap is open.
Can I pause or hold the nightly reconcile, or skip a day?
Yes — a per-day hold or a per-week pause, either one. An operator running a quarter close or a manual reconciliation against an outside book (a CPA’s working file, a parent company’s ledger) holds the day from the dashboard, and the loop writes the hold into the audit trail rather than running the reconcile against a ledger it knows is being worked by hand. A per-week pause — the week a bookkeeper is on-site, the week the operator is migrating the POS provider — pauses the loop without re-onboarding each feed when it returns. A held day still gets a file — an empty reconciliation with the hold entry logged and the per-source feeds flagged as paused — so the books the CPA opens on Monday show the gap was intentional, not a missed run. The audit trail reads: reconcile day × held by operator × resumed on day × with per-day trail since. The contact page routes a held-loop side-effect to the team within one business day.
5 questions answered · the loop that fires the reconcile is on the small-biz pillar, the price frame is on the pricing grid
The next step
Wire the nightly reconcile today, retire the Sunday-night stack.
Starter (under $81 / month) ships the nightly receipts reconcile on top of the bank + processor + POS wire-up — the day’s mail, the day’s POS export, and the day’s processor statement matched against the costing ledger before midnight, gaps surfaced not inferred. The chaser and the cash-flow watch ship on the same tier. Pro layers the multi-state sales-tax estimate on top. Managed hands the period close to a human. Three tiers, no surprise implementation fee — pick the one that fits your ops.
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