Supplier statement reconciliation for block managers

A cleaning contractor that works across forty of your buildings sends one statement a month. It lists every invoice they think is open, every credit and every payment they have received. Somewhere in it is the invoice your team never saw, and the credit note that was promised and never arrived.

Supplier statement reconciliation is how you find them. For block managers it matters more than for most AP teams, because each difference belongs to a particular building and a particular set of leaseholders.

Why it matters in block management

• A missing invoice means a cost the building has used and not yet recorded, which surfaces later as a late charge or a disputed account.

• A missing credit note is money the building is owed.

• A duplicate payment takes money from the wrong fund until it is recovered.

• At year end, open differences become accruals and explanations in the service charge accounts.

The five differences to look for

1. Invoices on the statement and missing from your ledger. Either they never arrived, or they are waiting in a queue or an approver’s inbox.

2. Invoices in your ledger and missing from the statement. The supplier may have issued a credit, or recorded the invoice against another account.

3. Amounts that differ. Often a price change, a partial credit or a keying error.

4. Credit notes the supplier has issued that you have not received.

5. Payments that differ in timing or amount. A payment made just before the statement date can appear on one side only.

A monthly routine

1. Collect statements from your main suppliers each month, and keep a list of who has sent one.

2. Export the posted and paid ledger for each supplier for the same period.

3. Match line by line on invoice number and amount, then look at what is left.

4. Chase missing invoices and credit notes with the supplier, and check queues and approvers for anything stuck.

5. Correct genuine errors in the ledger, coded to the right building.

6. Record the outcome and sign off the reconciliation, so it is not reopened by accident.

Prioritise suppliers by spend and by the number of buildings they cover. A contractor who works across the portfolio is worth reconciling every month; a one-off supplier can wait for year end.

Suppliers who never send statements

Some suppliers only send statements when something is overdue. A list of who has and has not sent one for the period makes it easy to ask, and asking regularly is the simplest way to hear about problems early.

Automating the matching

Our invoice automation for property management matches supplier statements against an uploaded CSV of your posted and paid ledger, shows line-level differences, tracks which suppliers have not sent a statement and lets you lock a completed reconciliation with dual sign-off. Your team decides what to do about each difference.

For how statements fit with the rest of the job, see our guide to accounts payable for UK property management.