Reconciliation now offers an interim transaction for matching even if the bank transaction does not contain its identifier, providing other aspects do correspond.
Contents
Background
Forms which already know how to attribute transactions add interim transactions to bank accounts. For example, the join form knows the transaction is for a membership subscription and how much of it is an additional donation; and the booking form knows the transaction is for a ticket purchase, and so on.
This means you do not have to re-enter this attribution information when reconciling the real transaction from the bank. Cameo will either:
- automatically reconcile the interim and real transaction if you have turned this on, or
- offer the interim transaction for matching during manual reconciliation.
To make the match, however, the bank needs to provide the interim transaction reference number. (These comprise six letters and numbers with a dash either side). Where a form payment can provide the processor (Stripe, for example) with this number, the processor will almost certainly echo it back. When reconciling these (automatically or manually), Cameo transfers the interim transaction’s attribution to the real transaction. It then deletes the interim transaction.
number missing
However, where the number has to be provided to the bank manually, such as with a bank transfer, this is less reliable because:
- you may not have set up the form to quote the number for the customer to use
- they may mis-enter it
- they may omit the dashes, even if the form asks them to include them
- clearing banks often carelessly omit references, even if provided.
Where an interim transaction should match, but doesn’t, you can enter (or start to enter) its identifier to match it manually. However, this relies on you knowing the interim transaction is already present and its number. If you miss it, the interim transaction hangs around as a “ghost” transaction. That duplicates the real one, and affecting account balances, among other things.
Therefore, Cameo now pro-actively offers an interim transaction for reconciliation, even when its number is not present in the bank’s transaction you are trying to match.
Interim matching
When the real transaction does not contain an interim transactions number, reconciliation now also offers an interim transaction (Fig 1) if:
- it is on the same account
- the amounts are the same
- the date is within the matching window
- the interim transaction’s attribution references the same (or if more than one, then one of the) membership numbers which Cameo would offer anyway for manual reconciliation as a subscription, for example.
Because this is a more tentative match, Cameo:
- also offers the other possible matches, such as membership subscription, as before, and
- identifies the interim transaction as only a “possible” match.
If it does indeed match, you should choose that over the subscription option. Otherwise you would need to clean up the interim transaction later.
