Every morning, the finance team at a membership organisation running iMIS pastes the bank statement into a workbook, runs the iMIS batch report beside it, and ticks each batch off against a bank line by eye. They put it at one to two hours a day.
Most batches match first time. The hours go on three cases. Amex settles two to three business days after the batch closes in iMIS, so its rows get carried to the next day’s sheet. One deposit can cover several card batches, so no single total matches. And a payment whose money never arrives sits in the spreadsheet until someone notices. The daily bank file once stopped downloading without warning, and nobody found out for weeks.
Our approach reads iMIS and the bank file and changes neither. A batch whose total equals a bank line clears on its own. A batch the bank hasn’t paid yet is not a batch that is wrong, so Amex waits with a due date and only goes overdue after it. Combinations that add up are suggested, and a person confirms them, with their name and the time recorded. Only batches that match to the cent go to the ledger. A missing bank file is an email by 7:05am.