Hiring isn't what it used to be
Hiring another accountant is a reasonable instinct when reconciliation volume or close complexity outgrows your team. It's also gotten considerably harder to execute than it was ten years ago. Fewer students have been entering accounting programs and sitting for the CPA exam for years, and the pipeline of experienced staff accountants and reconciliation analysts is thinner across the board, not just at your company.
That shows up as longer searches, more competitive comp for candidates who used to be easy to find, and a real retention problem once someone is trained: they leave, and the institutional knowledge about your chart of accounts and vendor quirks leaves with them, usually at the worst possible point in a close cycle.
What a new hire actually costs before they're productive
A search, then months of ramp time learning your chart of accounts, your entity structure, and which vendors are always a headache, before an accountant is operating independently. During that ramp, your senior team is still the one training them and still the one catching their mistakes, which means the hire doesn't add capacity right away, it briefly subtracts it.
The Close Agent isn't a replacement for a good accountant handling complex accounts and real judgment calls. It's coverage for the high-volume, low-judgment work that shouldn't have required a headcount request in the first place, live in weeks instead of ramping for months, and it doesn't quit six months after you've finally finished training it.