Optimising Account Processes

Wednesday, 22 May 2019 by John Rickard

One of the most time consuming operations within finPOWER Connect is Account Processes.

Of course, for most Users, this is not really of any consequence. However, for Finance Companies with tens of thousands of Accounts, the time Account Processes takes may become more critical. Therefore, we have carefully reviewed this area with a view to optimising performance.

Changes will be included in version 3.2, due to be released later in 2019.

Account Processes are generally run once a day after that day has been closed off. This is typically after Bank Transactions have been imported and committed for the previous day, i.e. on Wednesday morning Tuesday's Bank Statement is imported and transactions committed to Accounts. At this point, Account Processes would be run to create Payment Due and Standard Transactions for Wednesday and close off Tuesday, including posting Interest Transactions.

Account Processes will run through every "Open" Account and post Transactions as they fall due. This means every Account is examined.

The optimisations made in finPOWER Connect version 3.2 mean that generally an Account will not be inspected unless it needs to be.

This means Account Processes may run magnitudes of times faster on most days. Of course, if all Loan Accounts charge Interest at the end of a Month, then it may not be any faster on that day.

The optimisation works by storing the next date the Account is due to be processed. The Account is ignored if this date has not yet been reached. Various operations on an Account, including changing Standard Transactions, updating a Monitor Category or posting transactions to the Account may reset this date - and therefore the Account will be processed the next time Account Processes are run.

This "DateProcessNext" date is updated at the end of Account Processes, but, of course, only if the Account has been processed.

We hope for most Users this will make using finPOWER Connect that little bit better.

For those Users with the Enterprise Add-On and using Parent/ Child Accounts this works slightly differently. If any Child or the Parent Account requires processing then all Children and the Parent Account are processed.

There is an option to use or not use optimisation when running Account Processes - defined under "Other Processing options".

As a final note, there is a special "Pre Process Accounts" function that can be implemented to further enhance how this new facility operates. As mentioned previously, certain operations on an Account will reset the "DateProcessNext" date - which means the Account will be processed at the next Account Processes. This functionality can be used to reset the "DateProcessNext" and although an optional process, could be helpful for some Users.

Please talk to your Intersoft Dealer if you want to implement this, as it involves running a simple script.

Note, you would NEVER run this function immediately before Account Processes - as Account Processes does this anyway. You would run it over night to be ready for the next day.

As "DateProcessNext" is not set during the database upgrade, the first time Account Processes is run in version 3.2 it will not be optimised.