Space Reason

9 January 2026

Segregation of duties inside the match screen

Flowcharts describe roles. Reconciliation applications enforce (or ignore) them at the button level.

Hands writing notes beside a laptop during analysis

Policy documents love swimlanes: matcher, reviewer, approver. Inside the reconciliation management application, a single role may still hold “force clear” and “approve” on the same module. We have seen this after rushed go-lives, after mergers, and after a helpful administrator cloned a powerful role “just for testing.”

A short test you can run this week

  1. List roles that can force a clear.
  2. List roles that can approve or post the clear.
  3. Check whether any user holds both on the same ledger set.
  4. Confirm the audit trail records both actions under distinct users when dual control is required.

If your application supports maker-checker only on paper, a configuration & control review can document the gap before an upgrade hardens the wrong design.

Space Reason does not replace your internal audit function. We make the application’s actual buttons and roles legible to the people who own the close.