How AutoMatch Recommendations Are Calculated

During receipt processing, Receivables applies receipts to transactions based on the transaction information provided.

In cases where the transaction information provided doesn't exactly match the transaction numbers on record, the AutoApply process attempts to find as close a match as possible and either apply the receipt to the transaction automatically or present one or more transactions as recommendations for manual receipt application.

In like manner, during lockbox processing it may happen that a lockbox contains incomplete or inaccurate customer information. The AutoApply process attempts to match a customer to a receipt and present one or more customers as recommendations for the receipt.

The AutoMatch rule set provides information used by the AutoApply process to complete the process of applying receipts to transactions. The settings in the AutoMatch rule set provide these recommendations:

• Customer recommendations: The matching process recommends customers for lockbox receipts that have invalid customer information.

• Transaction recommendations: The matching process recommends one or more transactions for receipt application for both lockbox and manual receipts.

Settings That Affect AutoMatch Recommendations

Recommendations are based on matching threshold levels defined in the AutoMatch rule set. These threshold settings determine the percentage level necessary to consider a customer or transaction for receipt recommendation:

• Customer Recommendation Threshold: The qualifying percentage necessary to add customer information to a receipt. If the calculated score for a customer account number is above this threshold, then the AutoApply process adds this customer information to the receipt.

• Minimum Match Threshold: The qualifying percentage necessary to recommend a transaction for receipt application. If the calculated score for one or more transactions is above this threshold, the AutoApply process recommends the transactions for receipt application, in order of the highest percentage match.

  Note: The minimum match threshold must be less than the customer recommendation threshold and the combined weighted threshold.

• Combined Weighted Threshold: The qualifying percentage necessary for the AutoApply process to apply a receipt to a transaction automatically. This percentage is the sum of the qualifying percentages defined for the supplied customer information, transaction information, and actual transaction amount considered for receipt matching.

• Days of Closed Invoices Threshold: Determines which closed transactions to include in the AutoMatch process. All transactions that were closed on or before the number of days provided as the threshold value are considered for application or recommendation.

How AutoMatch Recommendations Are Calculated

The threshold qualifying percentages defined in the AutoMatch rule set are compared to the resulting scores of each customer account number or transaction number analyzed by the matching process.

The matching process derives a recommendation in this way:

1. If applicable, remove characters and spaces from the number as defined by the AutoMatch rule set string handling.

2. Apply the formula (Levenshtein algorithm) to the resulting string to obtain the score. This formula is:

   1 - (number of changes required to make the recommended string match the provided string / length of the larger string)

3. Compare the resulting score to the applicable threshold.

AutoMatch Recommendation: Example

The transaction number 10010 is provided by lockbox for a receipt application. This number doesn't exist, but Receivables finds the number AR10001. The recommendation for this number is calculated in this way:

1. The AutoMatch rule set string handling settings indicate that the first two characters are to be removed from a string under consideration.

   Receivables removes AR, leaving the number 10001.

2. It will take one transposition for 10001 to match 10010. Therefore, the score for this match is (1 - 1/5) = 80%.

3. The 80% score exceeds the Combined Weighted Threshold value of 70%, so the receipt is automatically applied to transaction AR10001.