Actinic Payments reconciliation report in v10.0.2

[cbarling]

Has anyone used the new reconciliation report available in Actinic Payments in v10.0.2? We are looking for some feedback, but so far no one has commented, either good or bad.

Chris

[Harts Of Stur]

Hi Chris,

We have had a look at it but our accounts department have comented that without a tax break down they do not see the point of it.

Is it possible for a tax break down similar to the one generated by the tax summmary report to be added. Or is it possible to choose and exact time rather than just a date on the tax summary report.

Kind Regards

Graham

[cbarling]

Thanks for the feedback.

Unfortunately a tax breakdown can't be included because the report runs off the payment table and there isn't any tax information there.

The purpose of the report is to ensure that the amount received in your bank account matches the amount expected, and that there are no "orphan payments" where for whatever reason you haven't received the order, and no "orphan orders" where you think you have received payment but for some reason haven't.

Neither of these cases should occur normally although if your bank declines the settlement (a very rare occurence) it can.

Any payments made directly through the Actinic Payments virtual terminal will also show up as differences.

Chris

[domino1]

Reconciliation / Settlement Report shortcomings

Unfortunately because this report is generated using payment info from the Actinic database (offline) and not from the actual Actinic Payments (Credit Call) data, the settlement dates are inaccurate. This means that the settlement reports don't always marry up with the merchant account statements for the same period.

For example Actinic might think that a payment was settled on the 31st but the settlement may actually not have gone through until the 1st of the following month. This is more like a pseudo settlement report that requires manual adjustment to make it line up with your merchant account statements.
Granted you can normally locate the missing (or sometimes additional) payment by widening the date range but it's time consuming and messy and results in a report with explanatory scribbles all over it. If the report total matches the merchant statement total then the report is great but unfortunately this isn't always the case.

Is anything being done by Actinic to speed up the appallingly slow reporting process offered by Actinic Payments and the fact that you have to drill down through several pages of the report to find out who a payment belongs to? If the correct information was presented at the top level, the speed wouldn't be so much of an issue. This is the only way to get a truly accurate settlement report.

Sagepay (Protx) reports are lightning fast compared to AP and they provide the information that is required (ORDER NUMBER!!!) for each payment at the top level.

[cbarling]

Dave, the report is designed to allow reconciliation from end-to-end so you don't need to use the Creditcall reporting.

Are you entering a date and time that matches the actual settlement run that Creditcall does? Typically it's around 9.15 in the morning. You've got to do that to get the totals to match up.

First you need to know roughly when your settlement run goes through. You do this by looking up all the transactions in the laborious way that you mentioned, taking the very latest date/time that you can find e.g. 11/5/2010 9:15:33. Then use the "Add" button on the Reports | Payment screen to add this date/time.

Then once you have the bank total from the bank statement for the FOLLOWING settlement run, use the "Add" button again to enter the last date/time that you estimate the settlement completed, for instance 12/5/2010 9:15:00.

If your Report Options now have a From/To of those two dates/times, then in the panel headed "Settlement Date/Time" the amount should appear in brackets after the first entry. This should accord with the amount paid into your bank. If it doesn't, "Remove" the last date/time and then "Add" a new one a minute forward or back depending on whether the amount was under (move forward) or over (move back). Repeat process until they balance.

If you can't get them to balance there are several possible explanations:

- the previous date/time doesn't reflect the true date/time of the last transaction in that settlement run. Once you have got one to balance, this won't be an issue going forward

- you are experiencing the BST one hour out problem (see below)

- you've made payments or refunds directly through your Creditcall (Actinic Payments Admin) online virtual terminal rather than processing it through the Actinic desktop

- the bank has not paid everything that has been passed to it for settlement

- there has been an error in the Actinic/Creditcall interface and a payment or refund has been missed

It's only when you get the last two that you should need to run off detailed reports. You do a Creditcall versus Bank report and then contact the bank to investigate the first. You do an Actinic versus Creditcall report which you can then pass to Actinic support to investigate the second.

So although this all sounds quite complex and fiddly, it's designed to reconcile Actinic versus Creditcall versus Bank using a single method which is very quick once you get the hang of it.

For the issue about British Summer Time (BST) search for "Settlement" in the Knowledge Base.

Your points about the Creditcall reporting are noted. Interested to hear your further thoughts on my notes above.

Chris

[domino1]

Chris.
Thanks for that information. I stand corrected. I hadn't realised that Actinic keeps track of what was included in the last report so all you need to do is add the time (or just after) of the next latest settlement to be included. This certainly makes the report a LOT more usable and extremely fast compared to the online AP reports. The speed of the online reports is actually no longer an issue as this feature removes the need to use them except for accessing the settlement time of the latest batch to be reconciled.

I didn't find the HELP pages on this report to be very useful and your info above is a lot more detailed. Can this be added to the help or perhaps the AUG?

[leehack]

Better still go for videos, they're the modern way!

[domino1]

Better still go for videos, they're the modern way!

Agreed! A 'How To Reconcile Your Bank Statements With Actinic Payments' video is a great idea.