Balance sheets are essential financial documents that show a business’s assets, liabilities, and equity. For MCA brokers and funders, these statements reveal whether a business has the liquidity and structure to qualify for funding.
However, even when the document is received and parsed, errors, missing items, or inconsistencies can still appear. Manual checks are slow, inconsistent, and prone to oversight.
Heron automates the scrubbing of balance sheets. The system reviews each document for completeness, internal consistency, and data quality before passing it on to underwriting.
It confirms that assets equal liabilities plus equity, validates line items, and flags missing or outdated data. By scrubbing automatically, Heron delivers ready-to-analyze, verified financial data directly to CRMs, removing the need for repetitive human review.
Scrubbing creates confidence in every record by catching issues early and ensuring only accurate, verified data reaches underwriters.
Use Cases
- Check internal balance accuracy: Heron verifies that assets equal liabilities plus equity before data is accepted.
- Validate line items: The system reviews category totals like current assets, fixed assets, and current liabilities for accuracy.
- Detect missing data: Flags incomplete records, such as missing retained earnings or equity sections.
- Identify document errors: Catches formatting issues, blank totals, or mismatched subtotals that could impact analysis.
- Check for outdated files: Heron identifies statements that are older than a defined cutoff period.
- Support underwriting decisions: Clean, verified data accelerates underwriting and improves confidence in funding approvals.
These use cases reduce costly errors and rework while improving decision readiness.
Operational Impact
Scrubbing balance sheets with Heron drives measurable operational gains.
- Improved accuracy: Automated checks catch inconsistencies faster and more reliably than manual review.
- Faster turnaround: Underwriters receive clean data immediately, cutting hours from prep time.
- Reduced manual labor: Fewer staff hours are required for data validation or spreadsheet review.
- Enhanced scalability: Teams can manage growing volumes without sacrificing data quality.
- Consistent audit quality: Scrub logs document every check performed, simplifying compliance.
Heron’s scrubbing function ensures that underwriting teams always work with high-integrity data, supporting faster, smarter decisions.
Scrubbing Logic and Validation Framework
Heron’s scrubbing engine applies multiple layers of financial and logical validation to each balance sheet.
- Balance check: Confirms that total assets equal total liabilities plus equity.
- Completeness verification: Makes sure all key line items (cash, accounts receivable, and liabilities) are present.
- Formatting validation: Detects irregular tables, missing headers, or non-numeric entries.
- Cross-field comparison: Checks that subtotals align with component items (for example, current assets equal cash plus receivables).
- Date validation: Flags balance sheets that are outdated or contain inconsistent reporting periods.
- Anomaly detection: Identifies improbable values, such as negative assets or excessive rounding differences.
This structured framework maintains the integrity of financial information throughout Heron’s workflow.
Governance and Data Quality Assurance
Heron combines automation with governance to make every scrub traceable and auditable.
- Audit trails: Each scrub event records the fields checked, outcomes, and timestamps.
- Confidence scoring: Each field receives a quality rating based on data completeness and validation outcomes.
- Human-in-the-loop review: Exceptions route to analysts automatically, ensuring unresolved items are addressed.
- SOC 2-aligned practices: All scrub actions follow strict controls for integrity and confidentiality.
- Automated alerts: Teams receive notifications when documents fail key checks.
- Retention policy support: Scrub reports are stored alongside the original balance sheet for full traceability.
These controls guarantee accountability while maintaining operational agility.
Integration and Automation Workflow
Heron integrates scrubbing directly into the intake and parsing process, ensuring every balance sheet is verified automatically.
- Email and portal intake: Scrubbing begins immediately after balance sheet classification.
- CRM integration: Results write back to deal records with fields such as “Scrub Status: Complete” or “Exception: Missing Liabilities.”
- Exception routing: Low-confidence or incomplete files go to an exception queue for manual validation.
- Customizable rules: Teams can define specific checks (for example, minimum asset thresholds or maximum debt ratios).
- Notification setup: Alerts trigger when scrubbing identifies missing or inconsistent data.
- Scalable processing: Handles hundreds of balance sheets daily without delays.
This end-to-end automation guarantees that only clean, consistent financial data enters underwriting.
Analytics and Reporting
Scrub data powers detailed reporting and operational insights.
- Exception rate tracking: Measures what percentage of files fail initial scrubbing.
- Accuracy reporting: Compares scrubbed results to post-underwriting corrections.
- Process time analytics: Shows how long scrubbing takes per document, highlighting efficiency gains.
- Quality scoring trends: Tracks improvements in broker submission quality.
- Volume analytics: Reports on scrubbed documents per broker, funder, or program.
- Audit-ready summaries: Produces logs showing exactly which checks were applied and their outcomes.
These analytics turn scrubbing from a background process into a measurable driver of efficiency and quality.
Implementation Best Practices
To maximize value from automated scrubbing, teams should focus on setup, monitoring, and continuous improvement.
- Define validation thresholds: Decide which errors are tolerable and which require review.
- Prioritize common brokers: Start with brokers who send the highest document volume.
- Audit early results: Review initial scrubs to verify field accuracy and flag false positives.
- Refine rules continuously: Adjust completeness or balance rules based on real-world data.
- Integrate with exception workflows: Route flagged files to reviewers without disrupting flow.
- Track improvements: Measure time saved and error reduction weekly to quantify ROI.
Following these practices establishes trust in the automation and reinforces a high-quality data culture.
Benefits of Using Heron for Scrubbing Balance Sheets
- Speed: Processes and validates hundreds of balance sheets automatically.
- Accuracy: Detects mathematical and structural inconsistencies before underwriting.
- Scalability: Handles increasing submission volumes with consistent precision.
- Auditability: Creates complete validation logs for every document.
- Reliability: Makes sure only verified, ready-to-use data reaches decision makers.
Heron’s scrubbing engine turns manual review into a fast, verifiable, and repeatable process that accelerates every stage of deal flow.
FAQs About Scrub for Balance Sheets
How does Heron scrub a balance sheet?
Heron reviews the document for completeness, accuracy, and balance integrity. It checks that totals reconcile correctly and that all major line items are present before marking the file as clean.
What happens if a balance sheet fails scrubbing?
If discrepancies are found, the document routes to an exception queue. Heron flags the specific issue and can trigger a missing-info request or recheck once corrected.
Can scrubbing rules be customized?
Yes. Funders can define their own validation criteria, such as requiring all statements to be less than 90 days old or setting specific ratio thresholds.
How does scrubbing improve underwriting outcomes?
Clean, validated data lets underwriters move faster and with more confidence. It also reduces follow-ups with brokers and minimizes funding delays.
Is Heron’s scrubbing process secure?
Yes. All scrubbing runs within Heron’s SOC 2-aligned framework with encryption, audit logging, and strict access controls to protect financial data integrity.
