Hi All,
Has anyone ever ran into the problem where Tessitura posting reports are not matching what the Bank receives? We are running into a few of these issues and are trying to find a way to "adjust" the ledgers for a specific day without having to do a sale.
For example, the bank said we received $1,000 in credit card sales for a day, but Tessitura says $995. Ideally we would like Tess to say $1000 also so it can match exactly what we brought in for admission sales.
Thanks!
I find that when they disagree it’s because of a credit card processing problem. With our previous processor we’d have transactions held up that I’d have to go in and release. With our current processor we occasionally charge a patron twice – it will be one transaction in Tessitura, but two charges. I then have to go online with the processor and refund the duplicate charge. We do a daily reconciliation of charges to identify these issues, then you have to dig a bit to identify the transaction and the patron.
Leslie
From: Tessitura Finance Forum [mailto:forums-finance@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Grant Offermann Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2016 12:18 PM To: Leslie Fillingham <Lfillingham@MILWAUKEEREP.com> Subject: [Tessitura Finance Forum] Credit Card Reconciliation question
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In my experience, if there’s a difference, there’s usually a reason. Look at the transactions from the bank. Is there one for $5? What was it for? Can you confirm that it didn’t exist in Tessitura? If there’s not a transaction for $5, is there one in Tessitura that does not match the one in the bank? Can you figure out why? Perhaps there’s a double-posting with the bank (it happens, more often than we’d like). A comparison of the two systems will turn it up. It’s tedious, checking transaction by transaction, but it really is the cleanest way – you don’t want to start making dummy sales to get your books to balance.
Jeanne DeVore | Technology Manager Chicago Shakespeare Theater
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From: Tessitura Finance Forum [mailto:forums-finance@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Grant Offermann Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2016 12:17 PM To: Jeanne DeVore Subject: [Tessitura Finance Forum] Credit Card Reconciliation question
Reconciling bank deposits to Tessy is my nightmare – most of the time they are just fine but occasionally there are issues and it’s a pain to find them.
You can run a list of every Tessy txn that makes up the $1,000 you believe the bank should have, so you need to compare that to each transaction that went in the bank, and to do that you need to get the detail reports from the credit card processor. We use Vantiv, so I can go to their website and download a list of txns that make up the deposit they sent to the bank. Then I compare that, item by item, to the Tessy list. Often the problem is the cutoff time; Tessy may close a batch at midnight EDT but Vantiv is on Central time so they might have some additional txns that would show up on the next day’s Tessitura list.
The other issue (as I’m sure you know) is that Amex txns always settle a few days later than Visa/MC/Discover. So that could also be your problem.
____________________________
Julie P. Hamre
Staff Accountant
5301 Tuckerman Lane
North Bethesda, MD 20852-3385
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301-581-5136
jhamre@strathmore.org
In office Monday-Thursday
From: Tessitura Finance Forum [mailto:forums-finance@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Grant Offermann Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2016 1:17 PM To: Julie Hamre Subject: [Tessitura Finance Forum] Credit Card Reconciliation question
Thanks all for the advice. Glad we are not alone in this.
I second Julie's point about making sure Tess is synced with your merchant account cut-off time. That would be the first thing I would check.
We do something similar.
If our batch in Tess is $1000 but in the bank for that day is $995, it's most likely the $5 is from a transaction AFTER the cutoff time.
We're located in Hawaii and we use Vantiv (formerly Element) to process our credit cards. Our batches are set to our timezone but Vantiv closes out in Central time, which is usually 4-5 hours ahead of us. So a lot of our nighttime transactions get swept to the next day. It's a HUGE headache when we have to reconcile.
We post batches based on merchant ID and day. Using the transaction posting report, I create a pivot table to summarize posting totals based on payment type (Visa, Amex, Cash, etc..). Those totals should tie to the bank and when they don't, I log into Vantiv and view those transaction details.
It's not that big of deal except at month end. Financial Edge (FE) requires us to make an adjustment each month for the few transactions that aren't closed out until the next day.
We did get Vantiv to change the close out time to match with 11pm or 12am in Hawaii, depending on daylight savings time (which we don't observe) so the amount of transactions that miss the cutoff is decreased. However, we still have to make a manual adjustment which is a pain.