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Clearing vs. a spreadsheet

Automatic matching vs. a workbook you rebuild every month.

A spreadsheet reconciliation clears the easy lines the same way Clearing does — a lookup, a sum, a color to flag what's off. The difference shows up on the other 20%: splits, high-volume accounts, and proving why a match was right months later.

  • Split and partial matches

    Clearing

    One deposit against five invoices, a part-payment, or a check that cleared a month late.

    A spreadsheet

    A lookup matches one value to one value. Splits get done by hand, or not at all.

  • High-volume accounts

    Clearing

    Clearing proposes candidate matches from the bank and ledger files you load on your computer, then leaves the exceptions for you. We do not publish a “lines per minute” or “thousands of lines” performance claim on this site until we have a measured figure from real closes.

    A spreadsheet

    Slow to open, easy to break. One bad sort and the reconciliation is quietly wrong.

  • Where the data comes from

    Clearing

    A CSV or Excel export from any bank, including international accounts with no feed at all.

    A spreadsheet

    Anything you can paste in, and you rebuild the formulas every month.

  • Why it matched

    Clearing

    The confidence score and the signals behind it, so a match is one you can defend.

    A spreadsheet

    The formula, if you can still read it. Nothing records why you accepted a line.

  • Getting better over time

    Clearing

    Learns each client's patterns from your corrections and proposes more every month.

    A spreadsheet

    Last month's workbook, copied forward. It never learns.

  • Closing the period

    Clearing

    A named sign-off that seals the period. Any change after it shows.

    A spreadsheet

    Nothing seals it. Any cell can change afterward and nothing shows.

Questions, answered

Isn't a spreadsheet free?
The file is free; the time isn't. A spreadsheet reconciliation is roughly half a day for a ~4,000-line account, every month, by hand. Clearing Solo is $199/year and the matching pass runs automatically, so your time goes to the handful of exceptions it flags, not the thousands of lines it already cleared.
Can I bring my existing spreadsheet workflow into Clearing?
Yes. Clearing reads the same CSV or Excel bank and ledger exports a spreadsheet workflow already uses — there's no template to rebuild, and nothing breaks when your bank changes its export format.

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Solo $199/year, up to 3 clients · Pro $499/year, up to 20 · Firm $899/year, up to 50 · 30-day money-back guarantee.