I said in Motivation and Opportunity that I would write about my first product, so I’m now pleased to report that I’m working on “IsoList”, an add-in for Excel that provides a reconciliation function for accountants.
Reconciliation is a very common recurring task for many management accountants, arising where the value recorded in one place needs to be reflected accurately in another. Given their responsibility to record and report organisational activities and, further, be able to substantiate the financial results, accountants need to ensure that their general ledgers correctly reflect the transactions sourced from other systems - the task called reconciliation. If you are a management accountant then you’re likely to be familiar with it.
Reconciliation Tools
The basic tool that accountants choose for this task is very often Excel. I do so myself, whenever I have the source data in a useful electronic form.
In truth, a database system such as Microsoft Access might be a stronger application to use. The matching of records in two separate tables is a core function of Access, not of Excel. Nonetheless, Access does have some downsides for the average accountant. It is less familiar, its workings are more opaque and therefore harder to trust and it’s harder to manipulate individual records or calculations when required.
As well as being the application of choice for many management accountants, Excel is also a very common crossing point in data exchange between different systems. Many systems can export to or import from Excel directly and if not, can use CSV formats that are Excel-compatible.
Going with the flow, therefore, IsoList is an Add-In for Excel - i.e. a program that extends the native functions of Excel. With IsoList, an accountant will be able to continue working in Excel as usual, but achieve significant gains in the mechanical part of a reconciliation - matching off records that match and identifying those that don’t.
I’ll update with news on the development progress as it happens.
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