Working with data
Rate register
VLDTION does not fetch exchange rates and will not. A rate that arrived from a market data feed nobody saw is not evidence of anything. What it uses instead is the rate your own records carry: or a published table you obtained and imported.
Importing a table
01
Obtain it yourself
From the Bank of Israel, your bank's advice, or whatever schedule the engagement uses. VLDTION never downloads it for you, which means you always know where it came from.
02
Say who published it
The authority and the publication are required. A rate with no authority behind it is a number somebody typed, and the register refuses to store one.
03
Declare the convention
Shekels per unit of foreign currency, or the reciprocal. Getting this backwards turns $1,000 into ₪276, so it is declared rather than guessed at from the size of the numbers.
04
Preview, then store
The dates, the currencies, the rows that could not be read and the fingerprint are all shown before anything is written.
What is stored with every table
| Recorded | Why |
|---|---|
| Authority | Who published it |
| Publication and date | Which table, and when it was issued |
| Where it was obtained | So a reviewer can go and get the same file |
| Quote convention | Which way round the numbers read |
| Fingerprint | A hash of the rates themselves, so the same table imported twice is the same register |
| Imported at, imported by | Who brought it into the workspace, and when |
| Methodology version | The lookup rules in force |
Two rules, both conservative
Exact dates only
Exact pairs only. A USD/ILS rate is a USD/ILS rate. It is applied in reverse where the reciprocal is asked for. And the match says it was inverted, but two pairs are never crossed to manufacture a third that nobody published.
Where a rate can come from
| Origin | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Statement | The bank statement printed the rate on the movement |
| Ledger | The accounting system recorded it on the posting |
| Derived | The posting carries both amounts, and the rate follows from them |
| Register | A published table you imported here |
| Reviewer | A person entered it, and the record says who |
Every converted match names which of these it used, prints the rate, the arithmetic and the difference that remained, and carries all of it onto the working paper. The provenance is on the match, not behind a tooltip. This is forensic software.
Scope
- A register belongs to one client, and no other client's reconciliation can see it.
- A corrected table imported later wins over an earlier one for the same date, and the match names which register answered.
- Removing a register does not rewrite the runs that used it: those recorded the rate, the source and the arithmetic when they ran.