Automation of Dominion Bank's federal reserve bank account

Abstract

The two-phase approach to the problem of reconciling Dominion Bank's FRB account permitted us to satisfy the critical need for improving the manual process, while allowing us to plan a long-term solution. The implementation of the short-term program provided an automated means of keeping track of exception items by allowing the addition and deletion of items in four database files representing "We Debits," We Credits," "FRB Debits, II and "FRB Credits." This eliminated the need to manually transcribe the revised list, initially comprising 1300 items, on a biweekly basis. The migration from a biweekly to a daily reconcilement would have been impossible without the implementation of this program. The short-term program also provided the ability to print reports of exception items in a variety of formats which made it possible to focus on stale items and to report only the relevant items to the originating areas which was made possible by the use of the balancing and report group codes. The balancing phase of the process was also enhanced by the short-term program because it provided the ability to instantaneously calculate net totals of exception items. This feature helped to identify out-of-balance conditions prior to the close of business each day_ The use of the balancing group codes made the balancing process more efficient because out-of-balance conditions could be identified by group, permitting faster resolution of problem conditions. Another feature of the short-term program that enhanced the reconcilement process was the ability to attach descriptive information to the exception items in the database files using a 3D-character description field. Special reports could be generated as needed based on the information in this field,