Ledger — the reconciliation rebuild

Ledger's reconciliation screen was a table with 31 columns and a filter bar nobody used. Finance teams exported to Excel and did the work there, which meant our product was, functionally, a download button.

We spent three weeks watching six teams do month-end. The insight was not about the table at all: 80% of the time went on the same nine exception types, and the tool had no concept of an exception.

The rebuild put exceptions first and the table second. Month-end went from about four hours to forty minutes for the median customer, and Excel exports dropped by two thirds.