Minimizing Transaction Processing Errors

In the world of transaction processing, it is not always possible to match transactions during the same batch processing run. For example, the payment for an invoice may not arrive until the day after it is due; however, depending on the cut-off time for a particular application, the payment may not be considered late. Various scenarios can contribute to the difficulty of reconciling transactions : partial payments, inaccurate information, the time required for a transaction to clear, and so on. It is more efficient to allow processing to continue for matched transactions, while holding back the unmatched transactions for a specified time.

Problem

A financial institution uses 3PM as its posting end-of-day but the ATM day ends at 4PM. Because of the one-hour delay, not all ATM transactions will post on the same day.

When matching transactions, you want to allow the maximum possible time to diminish the number of errors reported.

Suspense processing is a way to hold back unmatched transactions for later processing. This type of processing provides the opportunity to research and correct errors before the processing is completed

Solution

Follow the instructions below to set up your ACR/Detail controls to use suspense processing for the example described above.

1 ) Create a control job in ACR/Detail.

2 ) Set up three input sources :

- a file that contains the posted transactions
- a file that contains the ATM transactions
- a separate ACR/Detail history database to hold unmatched ATM transactions

3 ) Set up standard rules in reverse : consider unmatched items in balance and matching items out of balance.

- Modify the out-of-balance rule action to delete matched transactions.
- Use normal ACR/Detail rules to compare the posting and ATM files.
- Set the store history option to write unmatched ATM transactions to the history database.

Considerations

Follow the tips below as you set up your rules :

- Use the default cycle value of 1 or use the same cycle number to store all history items so the items will match up across days.
- Extract the transaction date for aging.
- Generate the Suspense Aging Report to show the length of time that items remain in history.