The General Reconciliation module of SimCorp Dimension© has various functions, such as cash, holdings, transactions, and even securities, and finance transactions reconciliations. This gives you a wide variety of use, you can even mix and match: for example, you could reconcile transactions against GL balances. In other words, it doesn’t have to be against a file received from outside of SCD.
When working with General Reconciliation you will frequently come back to the General Reconciliation Fields window. This is where you define which fields you can select in your reconciliation setup. For example from the holdings table, you can go via the holding key table to the securities table to fetch the Security ID. The default name for this is the path of the database tables which you can rename. It is a good idea to keep a naming system to know where your fields come from, for example with an H_ or (H) to signify holdings. If you've already defined a lot of fields and named them, there is another way that can help you: in the general reconciliation setup where you define fields (main page, right side grid), right-click on ‘Field’ and select ‘Field properties’; go to the tab Search Setup and add ‘Table’ to selected fields. Having this added, when you press F4, it will show you which database table the field is used in.
In the external part of the General Reconciliation setup, you can add a Data Format Setup. This is optional, however, it is a good way to transform the external data to match the data in SCD. Often there is no base filter to match your external data, so rather than choosing one, you can select ‘NONE’ as a base filter which allows you to name the fields from scratch to match the external file. If you prefer not to transform the external data you can leave the Data Format Setup blank in the Reconciliation setup and use translations and formulas on the internal data in the ‘Identification Rules’ and ‘Deviation Rules’ windows. And of course, you can mix and match and use both, depending on your preference.
Before executing the reconciliation, it can be a good idea to set up a prefix on the internal and external data source names. This allows you to better recognize where the data comes from in case of breaks. You do this under the function’s menu in the setting menu on the first tab called ‘General’. There are several other useful settings to control how statistics, comments, tracking, and re-runs are handled.
General Reconciliation Lines is where you define the rules for the internal side of the setup. Once items are paired the reconciliation rule defines matching criteria. For rows where the reconciliation type is ‘Cash balances’ a Cash Management ID is used to get the opening/closing balance from the bank accounts. The field ‘Parent reconciliation’ creates a relation to another parent reconciliation line. This means you can set up reconciliation lines where the opening balance is the parent line. In other words, payments are affecting the opening balance and if reconciled the closing balance of the bank account should be equal to the closing balance from the bank.
Once you have set up the General Reconciliation you can execute and view the results in the General Reconciliation window but the better place by far is the General Reconciliation Manager. Here you can re-execute the calculations, assign breaks to team members or groups, investigate by viewing holdings, transactions, and payments, and resolve breaks.
Dashboards are a great way to present reconciliation results for various users, from senior managers to end-users, giving a great overview of the work required. The Alerts functionality can be used to create a smooth exception-based workflow where breaks are prioritized and routed to users for review more seamlessly. Alerts are defined in the Business Rules Manager. You can assign multiple General Reconciliation setups in the Setups field, reducing the number of setups required.
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