RaiseNow offers various services that are provided under the label "reconciliation". Checking the definition of this term in the context of accounting, it is usually understood as the balancing of two different accounts. 

Among the RaiseNow services we differentiate two types of reconciliation:

• Acquirer payout reconciliation: The balancing of individual payments with summary payouts received from the acquiring partner.
• Reconciliation for deferred payments: The balancing of bank payments received with commitments given by donors. 

We further differentiate deferred payments into:

• direct debit payments
• referenced payments (QR Bill TWINT/Swiss QR) 

While acquirer payout reconciliation aims to provide information on fees and reception of funds, the reconciliation for deferred payments matches successful bank payments to one-off or recurring pledges initiated via the RaiseNow platform. 

Acquirer payout reconciliation

In order to explaining acquirer payout reconciliation it helps to formulate the problem that we aim to solve. When donors submit payments using electronic payment methods such as TWINT, credit cards and others, the acquirer will immediately confirm the payment. In RaiseNow this is reflected by a successful payment status on the transaction.

However, the funds will not be directly transferred to the bank account of the receiving organisation. The acquirer will transfer funds in summary payouts, which contain multiple donations, a couple of days later. The payout may also not be equal to the sum of the individual payments referenced for this payout. Acquirer such as Six and SwissCard will directly attribute fees to the transaction and subtract those fees from the payout. 

The RaiseNow acquirer payout reconciliation service solves this problem by updating payment records within RaiseNow once they have been paid out to the organisations bank account. Records will be updated with a value date and reported acquirer fees. 

RaiseNow supports this mechanism for the following acquirers and payment methods: 

• Worldline (formerly Six)
  • TWINT
  • Visa
  • MasterCard
• PostFinance
  • PostFinance Card
  • PostFinance E-Finance
• SwissCard: 
  • American express
• RaiseNow
  • TWINT payments via the TWINT App

For most organisations this problem is not solved by updating just the RaiseNow records. Rather, 3rd party systems are setup to manage main ledger and subledger information and these systems must be updated accordingly. To help our customers with this challenge, RaiseNow offers two options:

1. direct integrations for selected target systems as well as this article on the RaiseNow integrated reconciliation process.  
2. standardized APIs and automatic event notifications for custom integrations. 

Deferred payment reconciliation 

In the context of RaiseNow, deferred payments are usually created  for one-off and recurring donations both for QR Bill TWINT/Swiss QR donations as well as for direct debit donations. 

Direct Debit payment reconciliation

The RaiseNow payment platform will generate payments when a direct debit donation becomes due. For one-off payments this is usually the time of submission of the donation. For recurring direct debit donations payments are generated according to the configuration of the individual subscription. Payments will always be created with a "pending" status.

When RaiseNow processes a camt file with payment information identifying the original RaiseNow record, the payment status is automatically updated to succeeded. Third party systems are either informed via event subscriptions or through RaiseNow integrations (currently Salesforce only). 

Referenced payment reconciliation (QR Bill TWINT/Swiss QR)

QR Bill TWINT/Swiss QR payments are created on the RaiseNow E-Payment Platform at the time of submission in a touchpoint. The payment will be created with a unique 26 digit ISR reference that can be used to submit payments with Swiss financial institutions. This will happen automatically if donors use the QR-bill to initiate the payment. 

The record will contain a field

chqr_refno 

containing the reference. 

When processing a camt file with such a payment on the newer payment platform information from the camt file will be processed and a new payment record will be created. There is no link between the the payment in the older E-Payment Platform and the record on the new payment platform. However, both records will contain the unique ISR reference. 

This can be used to match the payment in third party systems to the original pledge.

• In Salesforce the original opportunity is identified via the ISR and updated according to the processed payment. See this article for details.
• In Dynamics 365 RaiseNow will pass the generated ISR on creation of the pledge in CE as msnfp_transactions.rnw_paymentreference. When processing camt files via D365 FI the transaction can be identified and updated. 
• SEXTANT will also process the camt file and update the donation on identification of a successful payment with that reference
• OM will also process the camt file and update the donation on identification of a successful payment with that reference