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Solution · Finance & accountingBalances pulled, templates filled, journals posted: a close that runs on rules, not on overtime
Account reconciliations and journals that close themselves
Robots pull balances from SAP, fill your reconciliation templates, certify accounts within policy and post recurring journals after a sign-off in Teams; accountants work only on the differences.
Executive summary
Stop closing the month by downloading balances into Excel and chasing sign-offs by email.
Mientha builds the close engine on the UiPath Platform and the Microsoft 365 tenant you already run.
Reconciliations start the hour a ledger closes instead of the day the last one does, so preparation no longer blocks review.
SAP S/4HANA (journal posting via BAPI); Excel workbooks and evidence library on SharePoint; Microsoft Lists register
Business problem
Financial close
A balance-sheet reconciliation proves that a ledger balance is explained by something real: a sub-ledger, a schedule, a contract, an open item that will clear. A recurring journal puts the same accrual or recharge into the ledger every period, whoever is on holiday. Both are controls that have turned into data-moving work: most of the hours go into downloading, pasting and filing, a fraction into judgement.
The accountants feel it first: they close twelve entities with the headcount they had at eight. The reviewers certify a hundred workbooks in two days because that is when the workbooks arrive. The group controller sees the same reconciliation done twelve times in twelve slightly different templates, with tolerances applied by habit.
At scale two things break. Journals rebuilt from last month's file carry last month's mistakes forward. Reconciliations that balance in total are certified while two errors inside them cancel out. Neither shows in the tracker; both are found by the auditor.
How it works today
This is the close we find in most shared-service centres running several entities on one ERP.
- PersonEach accountant downloads GL balances and open items (FAGLB03, FBL3N) and sub-ledger reports (FBL1N, FBL5N, MB5L) and pastes them into the entity's Excel templates
- WaitingControl-account reconciliations wait for the last sub-ledger to close, typically working day three or four
- PersonRecurring journals (prepaid amortisation, accruals, payroll, intercompany recharges) are rebuilt from last month's upload file and posted through FB50
- PersonDifferences are chased by email with the AP team, the plant controller or the counterparty entity
- WaitingReviewers get the workbooks in one batch on working day six or seven and sign the tracker after reading the summary tab
- Risk of errorAccounts that balance in total are certified unopened; old reconciling items roll forward with the same comment for months
- Risk of errorWhen the auditor asks for one account for one period, the evidence is assembled from mailboxes and personal folders over days
Why the current process costs more than it appears
Nobody planned this work; it accumulated.
- Qualified accountants spend the first four days of every month on work that needs no accounting knowledge: downloads, pasting, saving under the right name. Their judgement is used in the remaining days, under time pressure.
- Every close is a project run by email: the close manager asks who is done, the reviewers open workbooks to see whether anything changed since last month.
- Errors compound quietly. A wrong accrual copied forward is corrected two periods later by a journal nobody links to the original; a recharge booked on one side only is investigated by two entities in parallel.
- Each new entity adds a month of template work before its first close, so the centre grows headcount with the entity count.
Cost of inaction
Close week absorbs what the model does not show. Overtime and the daily status call are costs no cost centre reports as "reconciliation", and each entity the centre absorbs adds templates and journals while the deadline stays where it is.
The quieter cost is control quality. Reconciliations certified in total and journals copied forward pass every month until the one they do not, usually at the annual audit, when a finding costs more than a year of the process above.
A plausible organisation with realistic proportions. The figures are there to be recalculated on your data; they are not a client result.
A European industrial group with a shared-service centre in Poland closing 12 legal entities on SAP S/4HANA; Microsoft 365 E3; eleven general-ledger accountants, three reviewers, one close manager.
About 1,400 balance-sheet reconciliations a month (roughly 115 accounts per entity) and 600 recurring or accrual journals; sub-ledgers close on working days two to four; group deadline working day ten.
Balances are downloaded from SAP into templates that differ by entity, journals are rebuilt from last month's files, sign-off is a tracker column.
Nothing is reviewed before the last workbook is ready, so the work is squeezed into working days four to eight, with overtime every month.
Robots extract balances the hour a ledger flag is set, fill one template per account class, certify accounts within the written policy, generate recurring journals from approved schedules and post them after a reviewer approves in Microsoft Teams; people see only differences and high-risk classes.
In the modelled case the reconciliation and journal work is complete by working day four or five instead of eight, and the share of accounts opened by a person falls from 100% to a modelled 25 to 35%. These are modelled figures.
Proposed solution
Mientha builds the close engine on the UiPath Platform and the Microsoft 365 tenant you already run. Its centre is a reconciliation register in Microsoft Lists: one item per account, entity and period, with class, risk, tolerance, preparer, reviewer, status and a link to the workbook. Robots read it and write back what they found. As a tab in the close channel in Teams, it is the one view the close manager, the reviewers and the CFO share.
Extraction follows dependencies, not the calendar. When the AP team sets the "closed" flag for an entity, the robot reconciles that entity's AP control accounts the same hour; the other ledgers work the same way. Balances come from SAP through the BAPI and OData connectors where an interface exists and through GUI report transactions where it does not, into one Excel template per account class on SharePoint.
Certification follows the written policy. An account whose GL balance equals its sub-ledger balance in a low-risk class is certified by rule and stamped with the rule identifier and policy version. A difference, an aged item or a high-risk class (intercompany, tax, accruals, suspense) becomes a Planner task for the preparer and a certification request for the reviewer in the Approvals app. Recurring journals are built from approved sources (the prepaid schedule, the recharge matrix, the payroll summary), validated for balance, open period, account and cost-centre combination and amount range, held in the queue until a reviewer approves in Teams, then posted in SAP with the document number written back.
This is the engine under the close; the conversational close agent on our site sits on top of it, and bank reconciliation is a separate case.
UiPath Orchestrator triggers, queues and audit; UiPath SAP BAPI and SAP OData connectors and SAP WinGUI activities; UiPath Microsoft 365 activities (SharePoint Lists, Excel Online) via the Microsoft OneDrive & SharePoint connector; UiPath Microsoft Teams connector; Power Automate approvals in the Microsoft Teams Approvals app; Planner and Lists tabs in Teams
The register and account classes, templates per class, extraction robots, certification rules, journal generation and validation, the hold-then-post flow, approval and task flows, daily summary, evidence pack, runbook
SAP S/4HANA extraction through BAPI/OData and GUI reports; journal posting through BAPI_ACC_DOCUMENT_POST followed by BAPI_TRANSACTION_COMMIT; payroll summary import
How the automated process works
- SystemWhen the period opens and each ledger flag is set, the robot creates the period's rows in the register, extracts GL balances, open items and sub-ledger totals from SAP and fills the template per account class on SharePoint
- AutomationCertification rules run on every account: equal balances in low-risk classes are certified with the rule identifier; differences, aged items and high-risk classes go to people
- AutomationRecurring and accrual journals are generated from the approved schedules, validated and held in the queue with their workbook
- PersonPreparers get a Planner task with the difference and its likely cause; reviewers certify accounts and approve journals in the Teams Approvals app with the workbook link
- AutomationApproved journals are posted in SAP and the document number written back; rejected ones return to the preparer with the reviewer's comment
- AutomationThe register, the Planner checklist and a daily summary in the close channel show certified share, open differences and overdue tasks per entity
- AutomationAt period lock the robot files the evidence pack per entity on SharePoint under a retention label: certified workbooks, approvals, journal documents, exception log
Human-in-the-loop model
Automation handles
- Extraction the moment each ledger closes, and the filling of every template
- Certification of accounts that meet the written policy, with rule identifier and policy version recorded
- Generation, validation and posting of recurring journals from approved sources, after a human approval
- The register, the checklist, the daily summary and the evidence pack
People decide
- Certification of high-risk accounts and of every account with a difference or aged items
- Approval of each journal in Teams within a delegated limit; above it, the group controller
- Changes to tolerances, risk classes, ageing limits and approved journal sources
- The root cause behind a recurring difference, which is where the released hours go
Before and after
Systems and integrations
Every entry can be checked in vendor documentation. The evidence class is stated next to each one.
Inputs
- SAP S/4HANA general ledger and sub-ledgers (FI-GL, FI-AP, FI-AR, FI-AA, MM stock values)
- payroll summary file
- approved journal schedules and recharge matrix on SharePoint
Automation layer
- UiPath Orchestrator
- UiPath Robots
- UiPath Integration Service
- Power Automate standard flows
Target systems
- SAP S/4HANA (journal posting via BAPI)
- Excel workbooks and evidence library on SharePoint
- Microsoft Lists register
- Microsoft Planner checklist
Human touchpoints: Microsoft Teams Approvals app; Planner tasks and daily summary in the close channel; Lists and Planner tabs in Teams
Technologies used
jobs driven by ledger flags, one queue item per account and journal; retries, credentials, audit
Abalance and open-item extraction; journal posting
Avia the Microsoft OneDrive & SharePoint connector: register updates, workbook filling, evidence storage
Areconciliation and journal templates, one per account class
Athe reconciliation register, as a tab in Teams
Aclose checklist and preparer tasks, as a tab in Teams
Acertifications and journal approvals from standard flows; audit in Microsoft Purview
Adaily close summary and exception alerts posted to the close channel
AIllustrative economic model
The arithmetic is open, so it can be argued with.
Investigation and review stay with people and are not counted; what the model prices is the mechanical part of a close item, in an illustration of a shared-service centre closing 12 entities rather than a measurement at a client. We count 2,000 close items a month (1,400 reconciliations, 600 recurring journals) and 20 minutes of manual handling per item taken over by automation: download, pasting, matching and filing for a reconciliation, rebuild, upload and check for a journal. €30 is what a qualified accountant in a Central European shared-service centre costs per hour, fully loaded. The model counts capacity released; no headcount reduction is assumed.
Run the numbers on your data
An illustrative estimate from your own inputs. It models released capacity; it is not a promise of savings.
Business benefits
- Reconciliations start the hour a ledger closes instead of the day the last one does, so preparation no longer blocks review
- In the modelled case 65 to 75% of accounts are certified by rule; people open only those where a difference or a risk class requires judgement
- Recurring journals come from the approved schedule, so a changed prepaid amount is applied once, in the source, never copied forward by mistake
- Intercompany recharges are posted on both sides from the same matrix, which removes one category of mismatches
- Every certified account carries its evidence and its rule trail or reviewer decision, so an audit request is answered with a link
The management view
- One register shows the close per entity at any moment: certified, open, overdue, differences by size and age
- The reconciliation policy becomes a rule set applied the same way in every entity; every deviation is a recorded human decision
- Reviewers sign in Teams within delegated limits, so segregation of duties lives in the flow rather than in a tracker column
- Adding an entity means adding rows to the register, not an accountant; the close no longer depends on the two people who know where the macros live
Board-level KPIs
Security and governance
Where the data sits and who can see it.
- Posting rights are fenced to the journal document types and company codes in scope, and the robot's SAP user sees the ledgers in display mode only; credentials sit in the Orchestrator credential store or Azure Key Vault
- Segregation of duties is built into the flow: the robot prepares, a named reviewer approves in Teams within a delegated limit, the robot posts and records who approved what and when
- Certification rules, tolerances and risk classes are versioned on SharePoint and changed only with the group controller's approval
- The EU Data Boundary covers the workbooks, the register, the approvals and the evidence in your Microsoft 365 tenant, and your UiPath Automation Cloud tenant sits in the EU region; the payroll accrual uses totals, not employee data
- Approvals are audited in Microsoft Purview, robot actions in Orchestrator, and the evidence library carries a retention label
Why now
Each close at the current pace consumes the modelled €20,000 of accountant capacity, before the overtime and reviewer days the model leaves out
Shared-service centres keep absorbing entities while qualified accountants are hard to hire and harder to keep on copy-paste work, and auditors expect a written reconciliation policy with evidence per account and period
The building blocks are standard: SAP BAPI and OData connectors and SharePoint Lists and Excel Online activities in UiPath, Approvals and Planner as standard Power Automate connectors within Microsoft 365 seeded rights, so the approval flows need no premium licence
Relevant executive roles
The result is known days earlier, and each balance has evidence that can go to the auditor without a search
More entities with the same general-ledger team, and a close measured by certification rate and ageing profile
The policy is applied as written in every entity; every exception is a recorded decision by a named reviewer
Common questions and objections
The engine can write its results into either. The hours go into preparing data and journals, not into the tool that records the sign-off; if you own a reconciliation platform, robots feed it, and if not, Lists, Planner and the Approvals app are enough.
It is the control written down and applied to every account every month. High-risk classes and every difference still go to a person, and the auditor can test the rule set.
No journal is posted without a reviewer's approval in Teams, and only within the document types and amount ranges the policy allows; if your policy requires approval inside SAP, the robot parks the document and posts after release.
When this is not the right solution
- A single entity or under a few hundred reconciliations a month: a disciplined template and a written policy will do more than robots
- No reconciliation policy exists and nobody owns one; we can help write it, but automation cannot decide materiality or risk classes for you
- The chart of accounts or the ERP is mid-migration; automate the stable sub-ledgers first and the rest after the structure settles
A question for the next management meeting
On which working day do we know the month's result with certainty, and how many accountant-hours of downloading and pasting stand between the sub-ledger close and that day?
Implementation approach
Delivery runs in stages, so it can be stopped at any point.
We deliver
- One closed period taken apart: accounts, templates, the journal inventory with its sources, the differences and their causes, current tolerances and risk classes
- The account classes and the register in Microsoft Lists, with the policy written as rules the auditor can read
- Extraction robots per ledger, templates per account class, journal generation and validation, SAP posting, the approval and task flows in Teams and Planner, the evidence pack
- A parallel run on a closed period, a first live close for two or three entities under supervision, then rollout in waves with a runbook
We need from you
- Two closed periods of workbooks, trackers and journal upload files for the entities in scope
- A process owner in the general-ledger team, the group controller for policy decisions, the reviewer delegation matrix and the list of high-risk account classes
- SAP technical accounts for test and production with display rights and posting rights limited to the journal document types in scope
Stages
Discovery
Account, template and journal inventory, difference analysis, policy review
Design
Account classes, certification rules, journal sources, approval limits, security model
Build
Register, templates, robots, SAP posting, Teams and Planner flows in your tenant
Validation
Parallel run on a closed period, rule tuning on real differences, acceptance by reviewers
Go-live
Pilot entities under supervision, then the rest in waves
Departmental. The effort is driven by the number of entities and charts of accounts, the variety of journal sources, and whether a written reconciliation policy exists or has to be agreed first.
Working day ten, and the reconciliations are still being built in Excel.
Send us the reconciliation list for one closed period (accounts, entity, risk class, difference) and your inventory of recurring journals. We reply with the share that can be certified by rule and the economics recomputed on your figures.
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