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Summary
Technically speaking, reconciliation is the automatic matching and comparing of commission items to process forms. The most common use is making sure your orders show up as commissions, and that they're paying correct. In the real world that means a system that can deal properly with missing data, different formats, duplicates, incorrect amounts, rounding errors, and all the other challenges of selling products from dozens of suppliers through hundreds of partners to thousands of customers.
- Note: A form can have more than one commission item matched to it, but a commission item can only be matched to one form. That's one form across all processes.
The basic flow of reconciliation is:
- Setup. A Staff user selects the "reconcile" method for a new or existing process. The user defines [[conditions|condition] and other settings that the reconciliation system will use to match items to the process.
- Reconciliation. A staff user clicks the "Reconcile" button to run a reconciliation for a process. The reconciliation may result in conflicts, and those should be addressed.
- Use. The results of the reconciliation are shown on the "Reconcile" page as well as through filters and columns in custom views.
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1. Setup
There are 3 areas to reconciliation setup:
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Method
- Select the reconcile method.
- This must be done first as it enables the remaining setup options.
- If you are building a trouble-ticket style process that needs to reference specific commission items and adjustments, use the reference method instead.
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Conditions
- The conditions map variables in the commission items to fields in the forms. This is how RPM determines which commission items match up to a given form. This is similar to the commission import matrix.
- First is the supplier condition. This is the only condition that is required.
- Next are some conditions that are shared across all suppliers, "Customer", "Agency", and "Rep".
- After that the conditions are grouped per supplier. A supplier can also be removed from reconciliation here by selecting "No" above the conditions for that supplier. Available commission item variables are the account and any code, text, number, and date custom variables.
- An item must meet all the conditions to be matched. In other words, adding conditions narrows the scope of potential matches, reducing the chances of conflicts (see below).
- How the data is compared depends on the type of field the condition is using.
- For reference fields an "is close to" comparison is used where capitalization, spaces, and punctuation are ignored. Example: "(111) 555-1234" is the same as "1115551234".
- Text fields have the above option, as well as "is exactly" and "is in". The former requires, as you would expect, an exact match. The later considers the condition met if the value of that item variable is contained in the value of the form's field. This is useful in situations where, for example, multiple order IDs are entered in a text field. Example: "1234" is in "1234, 5678".
- Date fields have their own options: "is same day as", "is same month as", "is before", and "is after". These are self-explanatory.
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Reconciliation settings
- An overall cutoff commission_run maybe specified. This is the earliest run the reconciliation system will look at when matching items to forms.
- Use: When reconciliation is being used when there are commissions in the system that predate any forms. Even though they likely would not meet the conditions to be matched (see above), excluding them will allow the reconciliation to complete faster by ignoring items in those early runs.
- Forms are included or excluded from reconciliation by status level or if they are archived or not.
- Use: Only include forms that should be receiving commissions. As with the cutoff run above, this is beneficial for reconciliation speed as the system can then ignore forms that shouldn't get items anyway.
- The comparison will compare the value of items in a run matched to a form to a money field in the form. One commission value for the items may be chosen (Example: "Net billed") and one money field chosen.
- Example: My order form has an "Estimated MRR" field where users enter the expected monthly revenue for the order. If I enable comparison, RPM can compare that value to the total "Net billed" of items matched to the form then tell me the difference (if any) between what was expected and what was actually paid.
- Comparison will result in a form being "correct" or "incorrect" if it has at least one item matched to it. This also changes how forms are listed on the "Reconcile" page (see below) if comparison is enabled.
- This requires the form to have at least one money field.
- Setup includes the ability to specify a tolerance by $ (absolute) or % (relative) amount.
- All the items in a run are added together (since a single order may have multiple actual commission items) to get the sum for comparison. RPM uses the most recent run that has items matched for this form. This means a correct or incorrect form may change from run to run.
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2. Reconciliation
The "Reconcile" page for a process is accessed from the main "Processes" tasks page. This page lists forms in correct, incorrect, matched, and not-matched groups (see below). It also has the "Reconcile" button and a link to the "Conflicts" page..
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Running a reconciliation
- Click the "Reconcile" button to run a reconciliation. The system will use the conditions and reconciliation settings to match up commission items to forms.
- Note: This is a resource intensive operation that may take several minutes if many forms and commission items are involved. You can speed up the reconciliation by limiting the forms and items it looks at (see above). While a reconciliation is running, other users may notice a speed reduction when accessing forms in that process. The system will only allow one reconciliation to be run at any time.
- The first time you run a reconciliation will likely be the longest, because once an item is matched it is ignored in any future reconciliation. Even if the conditions are changed, a matched item remains with its form unless the match is manually removed.
- Best practice: Make sure a commission calculation has been run before running a reconciliation.
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Conflicts
- If an item meets the conditions for more than one form, it is considered to be in "conflict".
- Items in conflict are not considered matched to any form and are not counted for comparison purposes.
- There are 2 ways to resolve conflicts:
- Look at the item and the forms and manually select one form from the list to match the item to. A wizard is provided for this, click the "Resolve" link from the "Conflicts" page or the details page of the item.
- Add more conditions (see above) and then run the reconciliation again.
- When a new reconciliation is started, all conflicts are erased so the items can be re-evaluated.
- Note: Since a reconciliation is only run per-process, items that were matched to forms in another process will now be considered only for this process now be reconciled. Because of this, an item can only be in conflict with forms from a single process.
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Removing matches
- There are 3 ways to remove a match. All are manual ways since the reconciliation ignores matched items. Example: Changing the conditions has no effect on items already matched).
- On the details page of a matched item click "Remove match" in the "Processes" web box.
- On the "Select a commission item" page click "Remove matches" in the toolbar to remove the form match of any matched item in the current view.
- On the "Reconcile" page click "Remove matches" in the toolbar to remove the match any commission item has to forms in that process.
- Once a match has been removed, the item is treated as any other unmatched item during reconciliation. In other words, as if it had never been matched.
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3. Use
- Reconcile page. In addition to running the reconciliation and resolving conflicts (see above), this page lists forms. The forms are sorted by "Matched" and "Not matched" or "Correct", "Incorrect", and "Not matched" if the comparison is enabled (see above).
- Note: For a form to be listed on the "Reconcile" page, it must be in a status level and archived state that is included in reconciliation as specified in the reconciliation settings (see above).
- Item details. When an item is matched, the form is linked on the item details page. There is also a link to remove the match (see above). If the item is in conflict, all the potential form matches are listed.
- Form details. When a form has one or more items matched to it, the form details page has a link to those items and a link to the commission history for the form. The "Form commission history" page sums and links to the items matched to the form per run. If comparison is enabled (see above), the sum and correct/incorrect information is also shown for the form. Also, if the form is involved in a conflict, there is a link to the conflict resolution page (see above).
- Views. Reconciliation and comparison information is available through various filters and columns for commission item and process views.
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Security
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Staff users
- In general, viewing the results of commission reconciliation requires access to the given process and the "Commissions section" privilege.
- Matching and unlatching items to forms requires access to the process and the "Reconcile forms and commissions " privilege.
- Setup of reconciliation requires the "Add, edit, delete process templates " privilege.
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Agent users
- Agent users can not setup or run the reconciliation.
- If an agent user has access to a form, they see reconciliation information, but never gross commission.
- If an agent user has access to a commission item, they see a link to a matched form if they also have access to that form.
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Modules
- The reconcile requires the "Process management" and "Commissions" module.
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More help
- This page was last modified 15:24, 16 Oct 2008.
- This page has been accessed 2077 times.