I make a lot transactions between various banks, a lot of which is done automatically. Checking statements to make sure the money has been transferred has become a very time consuming job. What are the odds of a transaction going missing? Is it worth checking off all transactions?
Odds of inter-bank transaction going missing.
JIMB0 on 16/10/2017 - 10:49
Comments
Low for a technical issue.
Depends how much the transactions are worth, how much you value your time, and how long it takes.
A little off-topic but anyways…
When I got my first job I wasn't desperate for money so was happy just to just get paid. I heard stories of others finding mistakes but assumed it was just bad luck. The automated payment procedure was run by in-house accountants and we received those chequered sealed envelopes. It seemed too sophisticated to make mistakes.
Now that I've had a lot more jobs I have the opposite attitude. I assume they will make a mistake and sure enough nearly every employer has. And sometimes I'm the only one that picks up the error from 10s of people that may have been affected. From countless mistakes there was only one time that an error went in my favour.
The moral of the story is that people make mistakes all the time, including programmers and system operators that work for banks.
Saying that, all of my banking errors thus far (e.g. unpaid interest) were corrected by the banks themselves without my input.
This is so very true. When a lay person looks upon the vast complexity of the machinations that form the workings of some elaborate business or structure it's often considered, I agree, that many consider that mistakes or mishaps are a rarity or an anomaly, but they are absolutely commonplace.
I think that in part people assume that professionals or people working in fields generally know what they're doing so don't consider that they would make blunders but ultimately we're all human.
Great post :) Thank you for your insights.
Would be extremely rare for one to just go missing, but considering your high volume of transactions maybe you should reconcile your accounts and transactions
What are the odds of a transaction going missing? Is it worth checking off all transactions?
Probably nil, probably not.
Can't imagine personal bank transactions being on a volume that it's too time consuming, just grab transaction exports in csv and load it up into excel and poke around with duplicate values (or label your bank transfers consistently)
Is this for business or just personal banking? business wise bank recon monthly / quarterly
It's just personal transactions. I got my pay changed to go straight into ING now so that cuts down on some of it.
yeah I'd just grab transaction exports in csvs and do some sorting in excel;
For me personally, I use a consistent naming pattern for the description (e.g I use "tferto####") so I'd just apply a filter (Data tab > Filter) to the spreadsheet, use the drop down and search for "tferto####" and look at the totals of the filtered data to see if there's a difference. If there is then you'd have to cut down on where to look by selecting the appropriate column in each data set and highlighting duplicates in them (not so useful if you consistently transfer exactly the same number each time, making plenty of non-unique numbers) or just going through it manually and marking it off.
afaik you can only export 2 years worth (from the current day) of bank transactions, so further back than that would mean more work done manually
This is pretty much what I do. Not sure of your method exactly, but mine is similar and involves setting up a table with the exported csv file (available in excel 2007 and later).
The table column descriptions like date, description, amount etc, has drop down filters with lists that you can use to easily narrow your search and view only specific data. Very handy. If you want to you can apply multiple filters simultaneously such as a date range combined with certain description and even the amounts.
The imported csv file description, I find, is unwieldy somewhat an I use colums to text to extract and use just the first word in the description. This greatly enhances filtering.
Some banks only allow going back only one year, but ING allowed me to export csv's from the date I opened the account in 2012.
In the last 6-7 years, I have one that had gone missing, requiring a trace and took a few weeks to resolve. Another that I alerted bank as missing, but turned up reasonably quick, next day I think it was, just recently. To reduce the time/effort to check everytime, I do this :
if the bank has any form of notification, email or sms, to inform of amounts hitting an account, I will subscribe to it. Which saves me logging on to check.
for relatively big amounts, I will definitely check.
the rest, will check monthly, or whenever I happen to log on.
Reconcile your accounts with customer/supplier statements at the end of each month.
It may be a time consuming job, but it's best to invest some of your time proactively managing your cash flow.
It's my opinion that it's bad business sense to take a backseat when it comes to your accounts payable/receivable.
Odds are probably fairly low for automated transactions to fail. But if a customer fails to pay on time, you may have insufficient funds to satisfy your automatic transfers and will create a problem for your at your next payment run.
It may be boring, but keep on top of it.