BankLink
Bank Reconciliation Software
Courts Administration Authority
Case Study
Courts Admin Central Finance
Courts Administration Finance Branch provides central
support for approx 750 staff and 100 judiciary • District and Supreme Courts
in Vic Square
• Magistrates Courts
– City, Metro and Country
• Youth Court, Coroners Courts and various Specialist
Courts.
Accounting Services Team – 9 staff – Masterpiece AP,
AR, GL, Reconciliations (Court System, GL and Bank),
Procurement, Vehicle Fleet and some general admin.
Courts Admin Bank Accounts
Operate 6 bank accounts –
3 specific court accounts - reconciled using spreadsheets due to the relatively
low volume of transactions and the interest allocations required • Supreme Court Suitors Fund (approx $20M)
• District Court Suitors Fund (approx $1M)
• Magistrate Court Litigants Fund (approx $0.5M)
3 main bank accounts that are now being reconciled using BankLinkPC
software (in order of complexity) –
• Sheriff’s Office Disbursement – payment of Jurors and Witnesses
• CAA Disbursement Account – used for CAA trade and most court related
payments
• CAA Collection Account – primarily used for all money being receipted
History
• Up until 2003 the 3 main accounts were reconciled using complex
spreadsheets with large manual data entry.
• Audit criticism - still variations, hence not complete reco.
• Assistance was sought from MHM Consultants to review CAA bank
reconciliation processes and to identify a possible system solution.
• In the summer of 2003, after about eight months of
hard work, planning and preparation, Steve Potter
assisted us give birth to BankLinkPC in the CAA.
• Most of our complexity relates to revenue, hence most of this case
study is based on the Collection Account.
• BankLink product has also assisted streamline and document an
audit trail for the 2 Disbursement account reconciliations.
• A brief look at the Disbursement accounts first -
Disbursement Accounts
Sheriff’s Office Disbursement Account
• Very straight forward cheque payments.
• Approx. 900 payments per month for Juror Fees and
reimbursements to Witnesses attending court.
• BankLink primarily imports financial system transactions from
Masterpiece. However Sheriff’s Office payments are made from
an in-house payment system (JEM), hence detailed payment
files are imported from JEM.
• Bank transactions are imported using a Westpac file downloaded
through Corporate Online (COL).
Disbursement Accounts
Sheriff’s Office Disbursement Account (cont.)
So, what is BankLink ??
In non-technical terms - I’d describe BankLink as a very smart MS
Access Form that displays bank statement and financial system
transactions in a way that can be easily compared and maintains an
audit trail.
• BankLink has an auto-match facility to ‘tick-off’ (match) cheque numbers
from the financial system when they appear on the bank file. All things
being equal, the unmatched transactions are the unpresented cheques.
• For this account, approximately 98% of items are auto-matched.
BankLink
•Displays bank
statement items on
left and financial
sys records on
right.
•Can match single
trans by ticking
each side.
•Automatic Match
option is ideal for
this type of account.
•Set parameters
e.g. match when
reference and
amount are same.
> This
is the main matching screen.
> Display selections and action buttons
will be explained a bit later.
Disbursement Accounts
CAA Disbursement Account
• Used for most CAA purchases / payments.
• Approx. 4,500 payments per month (includes approx 3,500 court system
payments to Councils / Govt. Agencies and to compensate victims).
• Greater variety of transactions that require different matching
techniques. In particular –
• Simple cheque production – one presented chq. / one financial system pay’t
• PPS cheque and EFT – one bank debit / multiple financial statement trans.
• Rejected EFT payments (e.g. closed bank a/c)
• Direct Debit transactions e.g. Bank fees and Purchase (Credit) Card debits
• Auto-match facility captures 50% transactions, however one to many
matching (e.g. PPS) still requires manual ticking – easy to identify
Collection Account
CAA Collection Account
• Used for most CAA revenue collections.
Mainly relates to collection of expiation notice
payments and court fees and fines.
• Approx. 2,200 bank transactions ($6M) per month.
• Central reconciliation of –
• 26 Court Registries (Armaguard banking plus eftpos facilities)
• 3 Internet payment systems
• 8 External payment options (Bpay, Centrelink, Aust. Post, etc.)
• Direct Debit (a daily file of approx 1,000 debits)
Collection Account
Considerations when designing a BankLink Reco System
- some are CAA specific but some are general requirements
• All receipting and GL postings are generated through Court System.
• Court System has daily balancing reports but no bank reco function.
• Hence full consolidated reconciliation in Head Office.
• Registry staff are still engaged in the process by populating one line
on a spreadsheet each day, showing bankings and daily close-off
values and explaining any variations.
Collection Account - considerations
• Postings to GL bank accounts are summarised at fund level i.e.
transactions do not represent a break down of cash, cheque and
eftpos as appearing on the bank statement.
• Rather than import the GL transactions, a bank reco file was
designed / generated by Court system for importing into BankLink.
• This file is broken down by receipt type i.e. Cash, Cheque and EFT
values and is reconciled to the GL posting file.
• For Collection Account, the design and build of this financial
system load information was the key and involved considerable IT
development – there is no miracle cure.
Collection Account - considerations
• Due to timing issues and occasional
processing errors, across the large number
of Registries and systems, a pre-analysis
spreadsheet is constructed / analysed.
• The full reconciliation takes approx. 3 weeks for 1 FTE.
• The Senior Finance Officer through the reco process, facilitates
ongoing communication and training of Registry financial staff.
• The size and complexity of Court processing has required some
rigorous routine in Registries and in the actual reco procedure.
• Recent display enhancements and notes fields developed by Infor
may result in less pre-analysis being required.
Welcome to BankLinkPC
The following slides illustrate some of the main screens used
•
•
•
Financial System Data is loaded directly from Masterpiece in many instances
Is a 2 step process – firstly extract records from MP then secondly run a
check / load, which ensures that trans are only extracted and loaded once.
can import / reconcile multiple banks
Financial System Data can also be loaded from a file e.g. JEM, Collections
Bank Statement Data is loaded in the form of files downloaded from Westpac’s
Corporate Online.
•
•
•
The matching screen is the key screen used for the reco process.
Recently enhanced with larger display to suit 17 inch monitor and also
enhanced to display a greater range of data fields – refer scroll bar.
Various display criteria, sorting options, action buttons.
•
•
•
The reconciliation screen is used to validate that all bank statements are
loaded and that all GL values are loaded.
It provides summary values that classify the unmatched transactions.
Must ensure everything balances before marking as reconciled – can’t go
back.
In Summary • BankLink has been a very useful tool for pulling together and
maintaining an audit trail for our bank reconciliation processes.
• We use MS access to report and analyse unmatched transactions from
the BankLink database.
• Due to the volume and diversity of revenue collection across the CAA,
the implementation has necessitated ongoing disciplined processes.
However these processes are clear and I don’t consider to be too
onerous.
• There were a few hiccups along the way
and CAA required enhancements to the
‘off the shelf’ version of BankLink, but
the journey has been very worthwhile.
• Importantly, Audit reviews have reflected this.