Bad Remit Data Fixed and $6m Balance Discrepancy Reconciled

SUMMARY

PRODUCT: Collection-Master

PROBLEM: Errors on Remit and EOD Balance – Off $6m

SOLUTION: Fix Bad Data on Old Transactions

IMPACT: Firm could remit and reconcile balance successfully

PROBLEM

An experienced client services manager has worked with Collection-Master at her firm for over 20 years. Just before 4 p.m. on a Friday, she encountered a serious issue: running her end of day generated an error with the account off by $6 million. 

She quickly reached out to Julia O’Day, Vertican Account Manager for her firm, to see if she could get an emergency incident that day. She noted that the day prior, she had also received an error when reversing an old batch remittance. Julia immediately contacted Paul Perez, Client Success Team Lead – Collection-Master/vMedia, to see if he could jump in, and she guided the manager through the emergency incident purchase process. 

After dropping everything to tend to the client, Paul was able to diagnose the issue within 10-15 minutes. The old batch remittance had bad data in three transactions. This bad data could have resulted from any number of issues: lack of maintenance updates, a hardware issue, or a difference between current table structure or fields from prior years.

When the program cannot read the data or the data is corrupt, it will enter a value; in this case, the value was -2002000. Multiplied by three transactions, the result was a negative $6 million balance error. 

SOLUTION

Paul used special, advanced tools to edit the COLLBILL and COSTBILL tables to correct the data in the remittance and cost bill. He then checked the bank account balance and ensured that the fix did not negatively impact other functions in the software.

While this sounds simple, it wasn’t. Without expert knowledge, a firm wouldn’t even know what tools to use, much less how to use them. Vertican’s SME, Paul, identified the proper tool, which was a potentially destructive tool that isn’t normally used for this type of problem. This situation is really not something a client could likely ever diagnose much less fix.

Keep in mind that while this problem was caused by an old batch remittance, bad data can happen to you with yesterday’s data. The index could be bad, maintenance could have been lacking, or the network could have interrupted writing the data to your hard drive. It could be something that’s not even related to Collection-Master.

IMPACT

After a couple of hours with Paul, the manager was able to rerun the remit successfully and reconcile the balance. 

Being able to remit and run your financials are key business processes you don’t want interrupted. Without Paul’s help, the firm would not have been able to remit to their client or run their end of day to reconcile their account. 

How Do Emergency Incidents Work?

In this situation, Vertican’s Account Manager determined that the remittance error and the balance error were likely related, so the remittance error ticket would be diagnosed together with the balance error in a single emergency ticket.  

• However, even if the issues were deemed to be unrelated, once you purchase Emergency Support Escalation, you receive 2 hours of consulting for anything you want. 
• You can purchase Emergency Support Escalation during normal hours or you can purchase Weekend/Holiday Emergency Support. 

Your Account Manager Can Help

One of the benefits your Account Manager provides is acting as a liaison with our Client Success team, developers, and even product owners. In this case, Julia helped the firm get emergency support. 

• In January 2025, Nicholas Arcaro, SVP Business Development, announced a new benefit for Silver and Gold subscription clients:
  an assigned Account Manager. 
• Platinum and Diamond clients receive a dedicated Account Manager with an enhanced level of service. 
• Find out more about the Account Management Team.

If your firm doesn’t know who your Account Manager is, click this button: