Cash & reconciliation
Automating mobile money reconciliation for FMCG deliveries
6 min read
For most distributors, the delivery is the easy part. The hard part is proving which payment belongs to which invoice once a driver, a duka owner and three mobile-money references are involved.
Why mobile money reconciliation breaks
Retailers pay in fragments: part cash on delivery, part mobile money to a till, part bank transfer days later. References are often a phone number, a nickname or nothing at all.
Finance teams end up matching statements to invoices in spreadsheets, and unexplained balances accumulate into suspense accounts that nobody fully trusts.
What automated matching looks like
Every payment notification — till, paybill or bank — is captured the moment it lands and compared against open invoices using amount, payer number, outlet, route and delivery time.
Clear matches are posted automatically. Partial payments are allocated and the balance stays visible against the outlet. Only genuine exceptions reach a person, with the likely candidates already lined up.
Where the value lands
Cash position becomes a same-day number rather than a month-end surprise, credit decisions use real outstanding balances, and finance time moves from matching to chasing the few accounts that matter.
Common questions
- Can mobile money payments be matched to invoices automatically?
- Yes. By combining the payer number, amount, outlet and delivery record, most till and paybill payments — across mobile money providers and banks — can be matched to the right invoice without manual entry, leaving only true exceptions for review.
- Does this work for distributors still on spreadsheets?
- Yes. Disti iQ works with distributors running ERPs and with those running on spreadsheets, email and WhatsApp — reconciliation does not depend on replacing existing tools first.