Got told my ACH descriptions were useless by a vendor rep

Some guy from a payment processing firm in Omaha called me out last week saying my transaction descriptions read like garbage. He said 'nobody can tell if this is payroll or supplies without digging into the system.' I changed them same day to include vendor codes and invoice numbers and now reconciliation takes me half the time. Anyone else had a partner or customer force you to clean up your payment data?

2 comments

2 Comments

luna_clark389d ago

Wait, wait wait - you're telling me that sending someone a reference sheet was an option this whole time instead of rebuilding my whole system? I literally spent an afternoon reformatting everything because I thought that was the only way to fix it.

the_elliot9d ago

Gonna push back a little here. Good payment data is about what works for your own team, not what some vendor rep thinks looks pretty. If your old descriptions made sense internally and your people could reconcile without trouble, changing them just because a third party complained sounds like letting them run your show. Vendor codes and invoice numbers are fine, but they're really just making their job easier, not yours. You probably could've just sent them a quick reference sheet instead of overhauling your whole system.