Administering the system
Interface formats, returns and the customer master
Three formats, all edited on screen, and what reading the answer back saves somebody retyping.
On this page
Every finance system wants a different set of columns in a different order. All three formats this site uses are edited on screen at Interface formats rather than compiled in, so adopting a new one is an afternoon rather than a release.
Three directions
| Format | What it describes |
|---|---|
| Outbound | The file sent to the finance system: one row per order line. |
| Return | The answer that comes back, saying which lines were accepted. |
| Customer master | The finance system's own list of customers, read in to fill blank codes. |
One shape serves all three because the problem is the same one.
Editing a format
Choose the columns, name them, and put them in order. Each column is chosen from a list of things the system can supply, so nothing typed on this screen becomes a query: a column that is not offered is not available, and that is what makes editing it safe.
It refuses a format it could not reconcile
A format is checked when you save it rather than when a batch is rejected:
- An outbound file with no order reference or no customer code is refused. A file you could not trace back is worse than no file.
- A return with no reference or no outcome is refused, since there would be nothing to reconcile against.
- A customer master with no code, or no way of recognising which school a row is about, is refused.
Reading a return in
Upload it at Returns, or point the system at a watched folder and let it collect them. Both end in the same place, so the two can never drift into different ideas of what reconciling means.
The same file twice does nothing the second time.
Rows that match nothing
A returned row naming a reference in no batch is kept and shown rather than dropped. It is a real condition — a manual journal, a reference typed wrong, a file from the wrong month — and dropping it silently is how a discrepancy survives to year end.
The customer master
Reading in the finance system's own customer list fills blank customer codes on organisations that have none. It never overwrites one that is already set, and it reports the conflicts it found rather than resolving them.
That is the right way round: a code already in use here is one that has already had money go through it, and a bulk import quietly changing it is the single most expensive thing this screen could do.
Testing a change
Change the format, generate a batch, download the file and look at it before sending. A column added on this screen reaches the generated file immediately, which is the point, and also the reason to look.
Not what you were after?
Ask City Council in the bubble at the corner of any page, or open your help conversation in full. It is one conversation that never closes, so there is nothing to raise and no subject line to invent.