Definition:
ATM Transaction Reconciliation is a process that checks all the transactions done for a certain period for a particular bank’s ATM and identifies discrepancies like shortage or excess of cash in the ATM Machine.
The Reconciled Report provided periodically allows the banks to carry out the settlements for shortage or excess of cash observed in the ATM Machine.
Scope of the Problem:
The process was instituted by the clearing and settlement team of one of our Clients in the Banking Domain.
The two main objectives of the process were to provide a reconciled report which would help the user to get an idea of the settlements to be done in their ATM for the smooth cash transactions for their customers and to provide a transaction status report to keep a track of every transaction been done by the customers from their ATM Machine.
ATM Reconciliation Process:
Steps involved in ATM Reconciliation Process
- Collecting Transaction Details for Every ATM Machine.
- Keep a Track of the Opening Balance and Closing Balance for every machine.
- Depending on Closing Balance, had to load cash into ATM Machine.
- Every ATM has an ATM ID which provides a transaction history of the ATM Machine through Electronic Journal (EJ) Files. Hence to find the Transaction status for any Transaction ID, the bank needs to search individually search for a record ID through an EJ Files.
Problems Faced During Manual Reconciliation:
There were a lot of problems with ATM reconciliation done manually. Here are few critical ones.
- Track of Balance:- Bank had to keep a track of the opening balance and closing balance. Any discrepancies in any of the balances would disturb the arithmetic required to load cash in the ATM Machine.
- Threshold Limit of cash:- Since the bank had no control over the number of transactions done by the customers, it becomes difficult for them to set a threshold value to load cash in the machine.
- Transaction status:- At any point in time, if the bank needs to find the transaction details for any transaction ID it becomes a tedious job for them to go through the EJ Files which are Base64 encoded.
- Repetitive Steps:- The Bank need to follow the above steps after every periodic duration which is an error-prone and tedious process.
Benefits of Automating Reconciliation process with SheetKraft:
An automated approach to ATM Reconciliation would help increase the efficiency and turnaround time involved in the whole process. Here are some major benefits.
- Single source Data: With the use of a Database we could store the opening and closing balance for each day of every ATM. This helps the users to keep a track of all the source data.
- Providing error-free reports: Since we fetch all the data from a single source it becomes easier to process the data. After automating, sheetkraft provides a threshold amount to be loaded into the machine by calculating the average of opening and closing balance. These reports are generated on periodic duration which helps the user determine settlements for shortage or excess of cash observed in the ATM Machine.
- Quick summary report: Post data processing, it can be quickly summarized, and a report can be created fast.
- Transaction Status Details: SheetKraft in-build feature helps to decode those Complex Electronic Journal Files and provide a Status for any transaction Id in no time.
Flowchart after Automation
Overall Impact:
- Automation of this process by Sheetkraft, our client derived ~1man-year annual savings.
- The digital setup of this process made it extremely flexible for our client to access the report.
- Employees could now open the SheetKraft portal anytime and find the reports.
