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 AccountsOperate 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 ofhard 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 > This is the main matching screen.> Display selections and action buttons

will be explained a bit later.•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.

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 numberof 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 BankLinkPCThe 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, butthe journey has been very worthwhile.

• Importantly, Audit reviews have reflected this.