Two-File Reconciliation

Reconciles two tables on a key rather than on row order, and tells you exactly what does not agree and why.

Support

Email support@appgarden.co.uk. Include the Excel platform you are on (Windows, Mac or the web) and what the pane showed. If a reconciliation came out wrong, the two tables are the most useful thing you can send — but only send data you are content to share, and read the privacy notice first.

Replies are best-effort, usually within a few working days. There is no phone line.

Using it

Put both tables in one workbook — one sheet each — then Home › Reconcile two files. The pane is three steps in one column:

1. Pick the two tables. Left is usually yours, right is the one you are checking against. If the second one is a CSV rather than a sheet, load it straight into the pane; it is parsed on your machine and uploaded nowhere.
2. Confirm how the columns line up. The pane proposes a mapping by matching column names and column contents, and marks every row of it as a guess until you touch it. Set at least one key — the column that identifies the same thing in both files.
3. Reconcile. Then write the report as a new set of sheets.

What "matching on a key" buys you

• Column order and column names do not matter. Map Invoice to Doc No once and the two files can be in any order at all.
• Keys that differ cosmetically still match. INV-0012, inv 12 and INV12  are one invoice. So are the text "1234" and the number 1234, and a date written 04/03/2026 in one file and stored as a real date in the other.
• Rounding is not a difference. Set a tolerance — a penny, or a tenth of a percent — and only real breaks are reported.
• Sign conventions are handled. One system books credits negative and the other books them positive; tick sign flip and they agree, and the totals still add up.

What you get back

Six sheets, written fresh. Your source data is never modified.

• Summary — the four buckets, and the difference between the two files split into what explains it: rows only on the left, rows only on the right, and value differences on matched rows.
• Differences — matched rows that disagree, biggest first.
• Left only and Right only — the full source rows.
• Review — anything the run had to assume: near-matches, keys appearing more than once, rows added together.
• Audit — the recipe used, both file names, row counts, the timestamp, the version, and every normalisation step that was switched on. This is the answer to "how did you produce this" when you are not in the room.

Recipes

Save the mapping and the settings as a recipe and next month is one click instead of an afternoon. Recipes are stored inside the workbook, so they travel with the file rather than living on one machine.

Near-matching, and why it is off

The add-in can also match keys that are only nearly the same. It is off by default and has to be switched on deliberately, because a wrong near-match is invisible: it puts a tick against a row that never reconciled. When it is on, those rows are counted separately, never folded into the clean totals, and every one of them is listed on the Review sheet with both keys quoted so you can check it yourself.

The same rule holds for every other assumption. Rows added together, keys appearing twice, and references Excel has already truncated are all reported rather than absorbed.

Free and paid

The free tier reconciles up to 1,000 rows a side on a single key column — enough to prove it works on your own data, not enough to run a month-end on.

Pro lifts the row limit and adds composite keys (two or more columns), near-matching, saved recipes, and the CSV export — £12 a month or £99 a year, three installs. Prices and checkout.

Paddle is the merchant of record and takes the payment. The terms of service, the refund policy — a full refund within 30 days of any payment — and the privacy notice set out the rest.

Your licence key

Keys are shown on screen at the end of checkout, not emailed. Keep the page, or paste the key straight into the pane. Lost it? Email support with the address you paid on.

Entering the key stores an entitlement on that machine. If Office clears its storage — which it does on the web, and Safari does on its own — re-entering the same key does not cost you a seat.

Known limits

• Both tables must be in the workbook you have open, or one of them a CSV. Excel's add-in API can only see the workbook hosting the pane, so reading a second .xlsx in place is not possible today. Copy its sheet across, or export it as CSV.
• Dates are read under a locale you choose, not one we guess. 03/04/2026 is two different days depending on who exported the file, and picking silently would produce a reconciliation that is wrong in a way nobody can see. Check the setting matches your files.
• References longer than 15 digits were already damaged before we saw them. Excel stores numbers as floating point and truncates them on the way in. The run warns when it finds them; the fix is in the original file, by storing the column as text.
• Splits and merges — one payment settling three invoices with no shared key — are not matched automatically yet. Duplicate keys on one side are handled; a genuine many-to-many split is on the list.
• Excel on Mac and on iPad are untested. The manifest permits them, so Microsoft lists them, but no verification run has happened on either. Please report anything odd.

Your data

Nothing in your workbook leaves your machine — not a cell, not a column name, not a file name. The matching all happens in Excel. The add-in talks to one server, and only about your licence key. Details in the privacy notice.