Glossary

Glossary

Account (Bank)

Defines a bank account used by the payment processor to settle the EFT transactions. A bank account has an account number or an IBAN for identification purposes.
Incoming bank payments have to have a matching Bank Account.

Account (Accounting / ledger)

The merchant's general ledger is where they record the debit and credit financial transactions. The ledger accounts are used for the export (selectable for posting rules) of ReconHub.
ReconHub periodically creates an accounting export of the coordinated and grouped transaction data, which can be automatically processed by the merchants accounting system.

Acquirer

Adjustment

An adjustment is an entry made at the end of the period to correct a previous error or to record unrecognized income or expenses. Any differences between bank payments and the transactions can be corrected in the adjustments.

AID (Application Identifier)

Application Identifier which is used to identify the payment card type in use, it's a part of the EMV standard.
see Wikipedia

Bank

The merchant’s bank, to which the payment processor settles the transaction amount.
The bank provides an electronic file (e.g. camt.053) containing all account activity for the merchant’s account. The file also contains the payments from the payment processor to the merchant, including value dates and metadata about the payment, like gross, net and fee amounts or references to the payment processor’s reconciliation advice information (settlement id).

Bank payments

Bank payments are the payments you receive on your bank accounts. For each bank payment you can see its matching state, processing state and many more details. You can also browse your organizational structure and find the bank payments related to each account within your organization.

Brand

The individual brand used for a payment.
For example:
  1. Visa
  2. Visa Debit
  3. MasterCard
  4. Uber eats
  5. Reka

camt.053

Booked bank payments

Collectors

ReconHub uses collectors to gather your payment data from different data sources. You can track these collection runs in the ReconHub UI. Once data has been collected, it is imported. You can track the import for each source (state, import file, import summary, import errors, organizational structure).

ECR

Electronic Cash Register
See Sales

EFT

Electronic Funds Transfer
An electronic funds transfer is the process of moving money from one bank account to another using computer-based technology.

EFT Terminal 

A terminal represents the device at the POS that generates the transaction. Alternatively, in the case of e-commerce transactions, it may also be a virtual terminal.
The EFT terminal produces EFT transactions, which are transmitted to and settled by a payment processor. The EFT transactions for ReconHub are obtained from the payment processor. 
The EFT/POS terminal receives the transaction from the ECR either by manual input or automatically over an ECR interface. It then reads the cardholders payment card and send an authorisation request to the issuing bank (i.e. cardholder bank) to authorize the transaction. The approved authorizations are periodically (e.g. daily) submitted to the payment processor in a background process. 
Terminals can be stand-alone or integrated with the ECR. For ECR integrated terminals, the transaction is initiated by the ECR and values like amount and currency are aligned with the ECR. For stand-alone terminals, the transaction must be initiated manually by the cashier. This can be one of the error sources in the reconciliation of electronic payment transactions. 

ep2

eftpos 2000, the Swiss standard for credit and debit card-based terminals and acceptance infrastructure. See  https://www.ep2.ch/

Financial Accounting

The merchant’s financial accounting system where he keeps track of the debit and credit transactions.
ReconHub periodically creates an accounting export of the coordinated and grouped transaction data, which can be automatically processed by the merchants accounting system.
ReconHub is designed to support the most common financial accounting system import formats. Custom import formats are built on request.

Mandant

MT940

Electronic Bank Payment (Swift Message Type)

OU

Organizational Unit
Organisational Units (OUs) are the nodes of the hierarchical organizational structure. An OU can be a tenant, a mandator, a physical office or a business unit. 
OUs can be nested, which enables a hierarchical structure. This self-referencing is also referred to as a parent-child relationship and is implemented with the OU attribute parent, which defines the superordinate OU.
The root node for a customer is called a tenant. It defines the logical separation of the individual customers in the multi-tenant environment. 
A tenant can be further divided into mandators. A customer typically maintains a separate accounting for each mandator. Mandators can be owners of posting rules besides the tenant. Mandators cannot have any other mandators below them. The division into mandators is not mandatory.
Normal OUs may be arranged below the tenant OU and the mandator OUs.

Outstanding Receivables

Amounts expected to be still payed out to a merchant by a payment processor, always measures for a  certain date.

Payment Processor

The financial institution that processes the transactions on behalf of the merchants. The payment processor receives the submitted transactions from the POS terminals. 
The clearing process is triggered periodically, which includes 
  1. requesting the reimbursement from the issuing banks
  2. grouping the transactions based on the merchant's preferences

  3. Calculating the merchants net transaction amounts (merchants gross transaction amounts minus interchange fees and payment processor fees)

  4. Settle the total net amounts to the merchant's bank account(s)

The reconciliation information for the merchant will then be provided as a printout or as an electronic file (e.g. ep2 RAF, EPA, …).  The electronic reconciliation advice file contains information about the individual transactions and their fees. 
Reconciliation information from online marketplaces, cash handlers and payment facilitators (Stripe, PayPal, ...) etc. can also be connected. 

POS

The Point of Sale (POS) is the time and place where a retail transaction is completed. At the point of sale, the merchant calculates the amount owed by the customer, informs them of the total, may prepare an invoice for the customer, and informs the customer of the available payment options. It is also the point at which a customer makes a payment to the merchant in exchange for goods or after provision of a service. The payment terminal itself is also often called the POS.

RAF

ep2 Recon Advice File

Sales

Sales, respectively the checkout and E- or M-Commerce, at the POS at which the transaction was initiated. It is hereafter referred to as Sales. The Sales system has the effective turnover of the merchant.
Sales delivers the transactions, hereafter called Sales transactions, to ReconHub.

SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area)

Single Euro Payments Area

SWIFT

Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication
The SWIFT is a Belgian cooperative society providing services related to the execution of financial transactions and payments between banks worldwide. Its principal function is to serve as the main messaging network through which international payments are initiated.

Tenant

Transaction

The term transaction is used in ReconHub for the following operations: 
Financial transaction at point of sale. Will be referred to in the following as ECR transaction, EFT transaction, card transaction or simple transaction
Bank movement (payment / credit) in the bank account. This is referred to in the following as a bank payment.

User

The user corresponds to an employee of the merchant. He can login via the ReconHub web-based graphical user interface (GUI). ReconHub is multi-user capable.
With the ReconHub GUI, the user can monitor and control the reconciliation process. They can search, view, filter and export transactions. They can e.g. edit configuration settings, accounting rules and create adjustments.
A user with access to the user management can create new users and define the permissions of other users.