A Day in the Life of a Reconciler with Oracle ARCS

Financial reconciliation is one of the most critical processes in ensuring data accuracy, compliance, and trust in enterprise reporting. Yet, for many organizations, it’s also one of the most time-consuming and error-prone. Manual reconciliations eat up hours of finance teams’ time, introduce unnecessary risk, and often delay the close process. That’s where Oracle Account Reconciliation Cloud Service (ARCS) steps in — transforming the day of a reconciler with automation, intelligence, and real-time visibility.

In this blog, we’ll walk through a typical “day in the life of a reconciler” with Oracle ARCS and explore how the platform makes reconciliation smarter, faster, and more reliable.

The Challenges of Manual Reconciliation

Before ARCS, reconcilers had to deal with:

• High resource consumption: endless spreadsheets, data pulls, and manual checks.
• Limited visibility: no real-time progress tracking, leading to bottlenecks and late exception handling.
• Error risk: manual data entry and reconciliation often meant discrepancies slipping through, creating compliance risks.

The reconciler’s day was reactive, labor-intensive, and prone to stress.

Profiles: The Building Blocks of Reconciliation

In ARCS, everything begins with profiles. A profile defines a reconciliation unit — the account, description, assigned preparer, reviewer, instructions, format, and risk rating. Think of profiles as reusable templates: each month, ARCS automatically generates reconciliations from these profiles, eliminating the need to rebuild processes from scratch.

For reconcilers, this means clarity and structure. They start their day with a dashboard of assigned profiles, pre-configured with the right rules and ready to go.

Step 1: Data Load with Full Transparency

The first action of the day is data ingestion. Using Data Management (DM), balances are loaded into ARCS from ERP systems or subledgers. Reconcilers don’t just see the numbers — they can drill back directly into the DM load for full visibility of the source.

Instead of waiting on IT or chasing spreadsheets, the reconciler now has confidence that the data is complete and auditable.

Step 2: Auto Reconciliation

Once balances are in, ARCS gets to work with auto reconciliation. For eligible accounts — such as zero balances or cases where source and subsystem balances match — ARCS automatically performs the reconciliation.

This instantly clears a large portion of the workload. The reconciler doesn’t waste hours manually ticking and tying obvious matches. Instead, they can focus on higher-value tasks.

Step 3: Notifications and Task Assignment

After auto-rec, ARCS triggers notifications. Preparers receive reminders for reconciliations that still need manual attention. Reviewers and commentators are looped in through workflow alerts, with escalation if deadlines slip.

The reconciler’s inbox now works in sync with the application — they know exactly what needs action and when.

Step 4: Preparing Manual Reconciliations

For exceptions that auto-rec cannot clear, reconcilers perform manual reconciliation directly in ARCS. They work within a structured environment with supporting documentation, commentary, and workflows attached.

No more scattered emails or version-controlled Excel chaos — everything lives in one place, linked to the reconciliation record.

Step 5: Review and Approval

Once prepared, reconciliations move into the review stage. Reviewers are notified, can add comments, and either approve or return reconciliations for rework. The process is traceable and audit-ready, ensuring accountability at every step.

Step 6: Monitoring with Dashboards

Throughout the day, reconcilers and finance leaders can monitor progress through ARCS dashboards. These provide real-time visibility into status, bottlenecks, overdue items, and overall completion rates.

This visibility not only improves control but also drives faster close cycles — leaders can intervene early if reconciliations stall.

Beyond the Basics: Transaction Matching for Data Validation

For more complex use cases, reconcilers can use ARCS Transaction Matching to validate data across systems, such as ERP and FCCS. Matching rules and tolerances automate processes like:

• Bank reconciliation (bank statements vs. cash records).
• Accounts payable (invoices vs. POs and payments).
• Accounts receivable (customer payments vs. invoices).

This ensures financial integrity and strengthens trust in the reported numbers.

Transforming the Reconciler’s Role

With Oracle ARCS, the reconciler’s day shifts from low-value, manual ticking to higher-value analysis and exception management. Instead of chasing data and performing routine matches, they can rely on automation to handle the bulk of reconciliations, gain confidence through drill-downs, workflows, and dashboards, and deliver cleaner, faster closes with more accurate financial reporting. For organizations, this translates into reduced costs, lower compliance risk, and more empowered finance teams.

The “day in the life of a reconciler” looks very different with Oracle ARCS. By automating repetitive work, enforcing structured workflows, and providing real-time visibility, ARCS transforms reconciliation from a bottleneck into a value-adding process. If your finance team is still bogged down by manual reconciliations, it’s time to consider how ARCS can streamline your close process and elevate your reconciler’s role.

Our EPM Senior Consultant, April Sharee, recently presented, “Oracle ARCS Transaction Matching for Data Validation” at OATUG’s EPM Week 2025. If you missed the session or need a refresher, you can read the full presentation here.