How Much Time Does Manual Reconciliation Actually Take?

Ask any trade operations manager how long reconciliation takes and you'll get a knowing sigh before the answer. The truth is, most companies don't track it precisely because the number would be too painful to confront.

The Real Numbers

For a typical cargo, operations teams spend 3-6 hours on document reconciliation. This includes receiving documents via email, downloading attachments, extracting key data points, cross-referencing against contracts and previous documents, flagging discrepancies, and following up with counterparties.

For a mid-sized trading company handling 500 cargoes per year, that's 1,500-3,000 hours annually spent on reconciliation alone. At fully-loaded labor costs, you're looking at $150,000-300,000 per year just to check that documents match.

And that's assuming nothing goes wrong. Add in the time spent resolving discrepancies, amending LCs, and managing delayed shipments, and the true cost climbs much higher.

Why Automation Has Been Hard

Traditional automation tools fail in commodity trading because every counterparty formats documents differently. A bill of lading from one shipping line looks nothing like another. Contracts vary wildly in structure. OCR alone can't handle the variety.

This is where AI changes the game. Modern language models can understand documents the way humans do, extracting meaning regardless of format.

How Mercora Addresses This

Mercora reduces reconciliation time from hours to minutes. Documents are processed automatically as they arrive. Our AI extracts data from any format and maps it to a standardized structure. Cross-referencing happens instantly.

Operations teams shift from data entry to exception handling. Instead of reviewing every document manually, they focus only on the flagged issues that need human judgment.

Get in touch to learn how much time your team could save.