Amount Keying

A unit of work might be in an out of balance state as a result of keying errors. Often, reviewing and repairing the amount fields for the transactions in a unit of work can restore the unit of work to a balanced state. An operator can use Amount Keying to examine and rekey the amount field for the transactions in units of work that are not balanced. When the operator keys the amount field for a transaction, Amount Keying also sends the transaction to Business Rules for validation.

The Transaction Server posts a message to a WebSphere® MQ queue to notify Amount Keying when a batch is loaded, but not yet balanced or keyed. When Amount Keying receives the process work request, it uses the balancing rule from the inbound product code for the batch to determine whether the batch is balanced or not. If the batch does not have an inbound product code, the default balancing rule that is specified in the Common Services properties is used. If the batch is in balance, Amount Keying sets the batch to the balanced and keyed states and Amount Keying processing is complete.

If the batch is out of balance, several attempts are made to balance the batch:
  • All of the credits that are associated with the batch are designated to be keyed. The priority control configuration (PCC) for Amount Keying either automatically completes the credits or sends the credits to the keying operators.
  • After the last credit was keyed, Amount Keying again checks whether the batch is balanced or not.
    • If the batch is now balanced, Amount Keying sets the batch to the balanced and keyed states and Amount Keying processing is complete.
  • If the batch is still not balanced, only those debits that likely caused the batch to be out of balance are designated to be keyed. The likely debits priority control configuration, which changes transactions from the loaded state to the new state for the balance PCC, is run when Amount Keying checks whether the batch is balanced. The transactions that are selected by the likely debits PCC are determined by the selection criteria that you specify. The priority control configuration for Amount Keying either automatically completes the debits or sends the debits to the keying operators.
  • After the last one of these selected debits was keyed, Amount Keying again checks whether the batch is balanced or not.
    • If the batch is now balanced, Amount Keying sets the batch to the balanced and keyed states and Amount Keying processing is complete.
  • If the batch is still not balanced, the rest of the debits that were not yet keyed are selected to be keyed. The priority control configuration for Amount Keying either automatically completes the debits or sends the debits to the keying operators.
  • After the last one of these selected debits was keyed, Amount Keying again checks whether the batch is balanced or not.
    • If the batch is now balanced, Amount Keying sets the batch to the balanced and keyed states and Amount Keying processing is complete.
  • If the batch is still not balanced, Amount Keying sets the batch to the keyed state. More remediation must be done on the batch. Based on the default configuration in the Transaction Server scheduler, the remediation process for the batch is shown in the following list:
    • AutoAdjust automatically receives batches that were keyed but are still not balanced.
    • Batches that are not balanced after they were adjusted are sent to Transaction Correction and Reconciliation for manual balancing by an operator.

As Amount Keying processes transactions, it stores information in the database. It uses the same tables as Payment Repair.

The sample scheduler XML file provided by the reference application, schedulerReference.xml, can be used as an example of adding support for Amount Keying. To enable Amount Keying in the sample file, remove the comments from the XML include element for Amount Keying.