Automatic bank payment reconciliation for Grupo ZAG

Grupo ZAG collects payment plans month after month. Money reaches the bank every day and the system has to match each movement to the right current account.

An unposted payment is the most expensive and least visible problem in a recurring collections business: the customer paid, the system does not know, and what follows is a notice they do not deserve.

And the causes are everyday, not technical.

• Someone else pays: the transfer came from a relative's own account, not the holder's.
• Short amount: a few pesos below the installment leaves the movement pending review.
• Reference that does not match: the transfer description matches no recognition rule.

Each of those becomes manual reconciliation work, an installment the system keeps chasing, and an annoyed customer who already paid.

We addressed the three causes with configurable rules on the bank import module, so the posting engine resolves on its own what previously needed a person.

The goal was not to automate reconciliation entirely but to raise the automatic posting rate by closing the three known gaps.

Related bank accounts

• Creation, removal and editing of possible payer accounts linked to an owner current account.
• Facing a payment it cannot match, the engine checks for a linked alternative account before leaving it pending.

Configurable rounding margin

• Parameter defining an upward rounding when the transferred amount falls below the commitment.
• With it, the engine approves those payments automatically instead of sending them to manual review.

Valid references

• Management of the terms the system recognizes inside the bank file.
• Rules applied while parsing the file, not after processing it.
• The business extends the list when a new wording appears, without requesting development.

The order the engine decides in

• The parser walks the bank file applying recognition rules to each movement.
• If it cannot match a current account, it looks for a linked alternative account.
• If the amount falls short, it evaluates the rounding margin before deciding.
• Only once those paths are exhausted does it leave the movement pending review.

Architecture and technology

• Bank movement import module with a parser for the bank file.
• Configurable recognition rules: related accounts, rounding margin and valid references.

Learn more about software development.

The posting engine stopped sending to manual review the three cases that repeated most.

Starting point

• Payments from accounts other than the holder's with no way to be recognized.
• Transfers below the commitment, even by a few pesos, routed to review.
• Transfer references outside the rules, with no way to extend them without development.

Strategic impact

• All three causes are resolved by configuration, so the business adjusts them without new development.
• Fewer pending payments means fewer wrong notices to customers who already paid.
• Manual reconciliation is left for cases that really are exceptions.
• The engine's decision order is explicit, so why a movement stayed pending can be audited.