Merge rules

Merge rules are very helpful in the reconciliation process if situations where there are a lot of lines in the bank statement file that need to first be merged, and then matched with one bank account ledger entry.

With a merge rule, you can combine several account statement lines into one or more entries, for example, one entry per day or one entry per credit card terminal per day. You would typically merge bank account entries in situations where several credit card transfers are merged into one total per day because that is the amount posted in the general ledger.

Set up merge rules

1. From the Bank Account Reconciliation page, select Rules > Merge Rules.

2. To create a new reconciliation rule, in the action bar, select New.

3. Fill in the fields according to the descriptions in the table below.

   Column	Description	Example
   Bank Account No.	Specify the vendor/employee number that should be applied to the payment line when a payment line meets the search rule.	B010
   Text	Specify the text to search for when the reconciliation rule is used on the bank account reconciliation lines in order to identify a match. Note that you can also use wildcards.	DKFLCS0102 4015711830300
   Merge by Date	Specify to merge lines by the banks posting date or value date	Transaction Date
   Merge by Positions	Specify the characters in the Text field that you want to merge by. If you for example specify 7-10, entries where these 4 characters are equal will be merged.	7-10

Example

Imagine a scenario where you receive payments from a credit card terminal from the bank where there is a line for every transaction. When you get the receipt from the terminal, it has maybe hundreds of lines, with one total. However, in the bank account ledger entries, there will be only one entry with the total, because there you don't need to be specific about each line.

So, in this example, each of the payments from the bank has a unique transaction ID that contains information about the terminal and the payment. With this information, you can create a rule that merges all the payments by transaction date, and therefore they'll add up to match the total in the bank account ledger entries.

In the following, you'll see how you can set up this scenario, using the search text, in a merge rule.

For this example, the description from a payment in the file is ”DKFLCS0102 4015711830300”. In the description the date is placed in position 7-10 (0102), the credit card terminal number is 4015711, and the rest is a slip number.

In the merge rule below the text includes a wildcard, and the rule is set to merge by positions 7-10. By inserting wildcards at these positions, you can use the merge rule to create one account statement line per day per terminal.

• Text: DKFLCS4015711
• Merge by Positions: 7-10
• The following account statement lines thus become one line:
  • ”DKFLCS0102 4015711830300”
  • ”DKFLCS0102 4015711830301”
  • ”DKFLCS0102 4015711830302”

The rule in the example will also be applied to the reconciliation lines posting text, and will look like this:

• Merged line. See notifications for further information <DKFLCS4015711><0102>

Imagine getting 300 payments for each day through terminals and just how much time that would save.

You've now completed the module Statement Intelligence functionality in Payment Management, and it's time to check your knowledge.

Video

Watch this video to get a introduction to the reconciliation page and the reconciliation rules.