Why It Makes Sense To Augment CheckAlt’s ATM Processing With Our ATM Reconciliation Service
Written by CheckAlt
It makes sense for banks and credit unions to augment CheckAlt’s ATM processing solution with our ATM reconciliation service to expedite and enhance their own internal processes.
The CheckAlt ATM processing solution automates the processing and consolidation of items received via image-enabled ATMs, which allows financial institutions to easily monitor check deposits, in near real-time. Additionally, to maintain control of the workflow, users are able to set business rules related to total deposit amounts, individual check amounts, duplicate suspects, amount changes, and MICR data matching. Items can be flagged for review, or appropriate action when necessary, before a check is processed forward.
With ATM processing our application is installed onto ATM terminals provided by Diebold, NCR, Nautilus Hyosung and Cummings Allison. When bank customers or credit union members deposit checks or cash into an ATM, the terminal creates a file, and CheckAlt’s application picks up the transaction and sends it to one of CheckAlt’s processing centers. Depending on how an institution sets up rules to review transactions, will determine if the transaction is automatically sent for processing or held until it is reviewed. At the end of the night we send the processed transactions for clearing.
CheckAlt ATM reconciliation is a service for banks and credit unions that enables them to settle their ATM terminals faster, identify missing deposits, transactions processed on a different date, and deposits that were removed from clearing.
By taking a match file from the financial institution’s terminal and running it against the transactions in CheckAlt’s item processing system, the bank or credit union is quickly able to identify deposit discrepancies.
CheckAlt ATM reconciliation consists of a series of reports designed to help in the settlement and reconciliation process, including a Matched Transaction Report, Exception Transaction Report, Other Processed Transaction Report and a Transaction Summary Report for accounting and balancing purposes.
These reports help banks and credit unions know whether or not they are out of balance and why. Without this, institutions either do this reconciliation process manually or they just don’t do it at all.
If they reconcile manually, on a daily basis they will have to compare the information from CheckAlt to the information from their core system. And if they find that they are out of balance, they may not know the cause and they will have to research it further. Sometimes they don’t have the information readily available, so determining the cause can become much more cumbersome.
Whereas, if they were to add our ATM reconciliation service, banks and credit unions don’t have to wait on answers – our ATM reconciliation service makes it easier for institutions to balance out their terminals on a daily basis.
And reconciling accurately on a daily basis is now even more critical, as five federal regulators have just issued an interagency guidance regarding deposit reconciliation practices. The agencies wrote that they have observed that financial institutions use a variety of approaches to handle credit discrepancies.
“In some instances, financial institutions do not research or correct all variances between the dollar value of items deposited to the customer’s account and the dollar amount that is credited to that account, resulting in the customer not receiving the full amount of the actual deposit,” the agencies wrote. “The agencies expect financial institutions to adopt deposit reconciliation policies and practices that are designed to avoid or reconcile discrepancies, or designed to resolve discrepancies such that customers are not disadvantaged.”
Talk to your CheckAlt representative to learn more about how our ATM reconciliation service can not only expedite but also enhance your internal procedures.
Currently Checkalt’s ATM services are conducted for 3,000-plus ATMs nationwide.
