Information Systems:STM - Statements

ASW does open item statements; we wanted to do balance forward as well. Also we do statements twice a month.

The statement files keep history, so any statement can be reprinted. Statements can also be regenerated at any time. The program uses the settlement file to determine transaction balances as of any statement date. The opening balance of a statement is the closing balance of the previous statement. If a transactions is entered that should have printed on a previous statement (or a date is changed), then the opening balance will be incorrect. We will know this, because after the statement file is generated, but before it is printed we compare the totals to ASW. The fix for this is to regenerate the statement that should have had the new or changed transaction, and every statement since.

It was taking longer and longer to generate the statement file – up to three hours. The reason was that the balance forward statement generation program (ARRST002) was calculating the remaining balance of each transaction (all the way back to January 29, 2005) before deciding whether or not to show it on the statement (transactions due to be settled within the next 15 days). November 2013 this was changed to determine the remaining balance only for transactions to be included on the statement.

The open item statement generation program (ARRST003) was also calculating the remaining balance of each transaction back to January 29, 2005 to determine whether or not it should be on the statement (which is every transaction with an outstanding balance). In November 2013, this program was changed to start looking at January 2009, as the oldest outstanding transaction was in 2009.

Now it takes about 10 to 20 minutes for balance forward statements, and 5 to 10 minutes for open item; depending on how busy the system is. The change to the balance forward statements made the biggest impact, as they include all shareholders, and so is by far the largest volume of transactions.

- File ARSTTYP (STM - Customer Statement Format Types) tells which type of statement each customer gets.

- File ARSTHDP (STM - Statement Header File) is the name, address, date, and totals for each statement created.

- File ARSTBAP (STM - Statement Balances File) contains statement section totals, ie. for Invoices, credit notes, payments, etc).

- File ARSTLIP (STM - Statement Lines File) is the information for every transaction on the statement. (Note that for ‘open item’ it will contain all open transactions as of the statement date. For ‘balance forward’ it will be all transactions due within the next statement period – if they were due in the current statement period they would already be overdue.)

- Program ARRST002 (STM - Create Statement Records - Balance Forward).

- Program ARRST003 (STM - Create Statement Records - Open Item).

- Program ARRST051 (STM - Print Statement).