How to reconcile a credit card statement with an AI agent

Reconciling means confirming that your budget’s record of an account agrees with the bank’s. With an AI agent, you can do it in one sentence: “The Visa statement says I owe 624.37. Reconcile Visa.” This guide explains how that works in FireBudget, a Mac budgeting app with a local MCP server, and why the agent is allowed to do the searching but never the arithmetic.

The short version

1. The agent marks the transactions that appear on the statement as cleared.
2. FireBudget adds up the account’s cleared balance and compares it with the statement’s closing balance.
3. If the two are exactly equal, FireBudget locks those transactions as reconciled. If they differ by even one cent, it locks nothing and reports the difference.

The agent does step 1 and asks FireBudget for step 2, and it previews both before anything is saved.

Why the agent does not get to decide

AI agents are good at reading statements and matching descriptions. They are not a reliable source of truth for whether your books balance. So the work is split:

• The agent reads the statement, works out which transactions are on it, and investigates when something does not add up.
• FireBudget does the comparison itself, in integer cents, against a balance it calculates from your own data.

The agent cannot pass in a “close enough” result. The reconcile tool takes only the statement’s closing balance. FireBudget computes the cleared balance, and if the two differ, the request fails with a balance_mismatch error that includes the exact difference. There is no setting that lets an agent force a match, and the agent is instructed never to invent or adjust amounts to make one.

Before you start

You need FireBudget open with agent access turned on, and an MCP client such as Claude Code or Codex connected to it. What FireBudget’s MCP server exposes lists every tool. The statement import guide covers that setup in two steps.

If you imported the statement with the agent, the imported rows are usually already marked cleared. If you entered transactions by hand, the agent can clear them for you.

Step 1: Give the agent the closing balance

The Visa statement closing balance is 624.37 owed. Reconcile Visa.
Show me the preview first.

On credit cards and loans, money you owe is a negative balance in FireBudget. You can say “I owe 624.37” in plain language and the agent converts it to the right sign.

Step 2: Read the preview

The agent asks FireBudget for a reconciliation preview. A preview only reads data. It returns:

• the account’s cleared balance, including transactions reconciled in earlier months,
• the statement balance you gave,
• the difference between them, and
• how many transactions would be locked if you go ahead.

If the balances match, the agent shows you the count and asks to commit. When you agree, FireBudget repeats the check at the moment of saving (an earlier preview does not count as approval) and locks the eligible transactions.

Step 3: When the balances do not match

This is where an agent is most useful. Ask it to investigate without changing anything:

Reconcile failed with a difference. Find which transactions explain it,
but don't change anything until I confirm.

Common causes the agent can find by comparing the statement with your transactions in FireBudget:

• A transaction on the statement is not cleared in FireBudget, or one that has not posted yet is cleared.
• A transaction is missing, for example an annual fee or foreign transaction fee you did not enter.
• An amount is wrong, often a typo or a currency conversion that settled at a different rate.
• A refund or payment was entered with the wrong sign.

For clearing problems, the agent previews a change to the cleared flags, shows you which rows would flip, and only then commits. For a wrong amount or date, it can preview an edit to that transaction. For a missing fee, it can import the row. Then it runs the reconcile preview again.

What reconciled means afterwards

Reconciled transactions are locked. Agents cannot change them unless you explicitly allow an edit to a reconciled row, and even then the agent has to show you the warning first. In the app, reconciled rows are clearly marked, so next month you only need to look at what is new.

There is no undo-reconcile through the agent, which is deliberate. Reconciling is a statement that “these rows match the bank”, and it should take a person to reverse it.

A checking account works the same way

Nothing here is specific to credit cards. For a checking account, the closing balance is positive: “The Checking statement’s closing balance is 3,426.32. Reconcile Checking.”

One detail matters if you pay the card from checking. A card payment is a transfer between the two accounts. FireBudget keeps each side’s cleared state separate, because the payment can clear on the card and the bank on different days.

Privacy

FireBudget does not send anything to an AI service by itself. Your agent sends what it reads to its model provider: the statement and whichever transactions it looks up. The MCP server listens only on your Mac and requires a token you copy from Settings. Turn agent access off when you are done.

What FireBudget does not do

FireBudget is a Mac app for Apple Silicon (M1 or later). It does not connect to your bank, so the statement and its closing balance come from you. There is no mobile app and no sync between devices. The agent connection only works while FireBudget is open, and Claude Desktop chat, Cowork, and ChatGPT on the web are not supported yet.