Financial Reconciliation & Payment Analysis

Hospitality and event operations typically take payment through more than one rail: integrated card on the POS, standalone terminals, and digital or third-party tenders. This work is about making those sources comparable and explaining the difference.

A single EPOS total is not a settlement figure. Integrated card, standalone card and digital tenders land in different reports, on different timings, with different failure modes. Without a structured reconciliation, variances get absorbed into 'timing' or 'the bank' and are never actually understood.

• Compare EPOS tender reporting to settlement reports by source
• Separate integrated payments from standalone terminals
• Include digital / alternative tenders where they exist
• Surface variance at a level that can be investigated
• Keep the method repeatable for subsequent trading periods

Owned the analysis: source mapping, comparison, variance investigation and the reporting that finance and operations could use. No live transaction data is published here.

• Map each tender type to a settlement source rather than reconciling a blended total
• Align reporting windows so timing differences are visible instead of hidden
• Treat a variance as a queue of investigations, not a single unexplained number
• Use Excel and structured extracts where that is the fastest reliable method; automate the repeatable parts

KAPPTURE tender reports, integrated settlement (FreedomPay, Global Payments, Worldpay depending on the rail), standalone terminal reports and digital sources (including Stripe where used) feed a reconciliation layer. The output is source-level comparison plus an exception list.

• Source catalogue: what each report actually contains and what it does not
• Comparison tables by tender / rail
• Variance flags with enough context to investigate a transaction class
• Working papers in Excel for analysis; automated reporting where the extract is stable

• Different cut-off times between POS and acquirer / processor reports
• Standalone devices that are operationally 'on the outlet' but not in the EPOS tender file
• Partial refunds, voids and offline behaviour
• Keeping commercially sensitive figures out of any shared artefact — including this case study

Reconciliation became a source-level control rather than a single unexplained difference. The example table on this page is illustrative only; it shows the shape of the control, not real turnover.

• Clearer view of integrated vs standalone vs digital tenders
• Variances isolated to a source rather than a blended total
• A method for investigating exceptions instead of re-running the same export

• You cannot investigate what you have blended together
• Timing is a first-class field, not a footnote
• Operators and finance need different views of the same exception

• More of the extract-and-compare steps moved into automated reporting
• Tighter linkage from variance to the underlying transaction class
• Clearer handling of standalone estates alongside integrated payments