Set up reconciliation exports

I need reconciliation exports set up so our finance director, Maya Patel, can close books by the 5th. Create a daily export of settled transactions and payouts to our S3 bucket named company-finance, include payout_id, settlement_date, gross, fee, net, currency, and linked_charge_ids, and send a test file to Maya by Thursday to confirm headers and timezone. Check mapping against last month’s GL mapping first.

Before I hand exports to Maya in finance, make the output easy to match to our general ledger: surface a daily settlement total at the top, include payout_id and settlement_date in the filename, put fees as a separate column labeled fees_usd, and flag any negative-net or refunded transactions. Call out rows with more than one linked_charge_id so accounting knows to inspect.

We just handed Maya the first reconciliation export and totals disagree with the bank deposit. I’m not sure if the problem is timing, refunds, or fees being reported on charge vs payout. We have access to export settings and the payout ledger. What’s the likely cause and what exact checks should I run in the next two hours to identify whether it’s settlement timing, a fees mismatch, or duplicate mapping?

Every month we spend two days reconciling exports to bank deposits because file formats, timezone mismatches, and where fees are recorded keep shifting. Which habit should we change so reconciliation becomes one predictable step each day — what export schema, naming convention, and a single verification checklist would stop the guessing and keep Maya from chasing discrepancies?