- Feature
- Improved filtering for bridge transaction clearance
- Availability
- Generally available in Finance 10.0.49
- Industry focus
- Telecom operators
Telecom operators handle payments at a scale few other industries match. Consumer bills, business accounts, wholesale interconnect settlements, roaming partners, dealer commissions and equipment suppliers all generate cash movements, many of them through interim bridging accounts while payments are confirmed. When something needs to be cleared or investigated, the treasury team needs to find the right transactions quickly.
The industry challenge
Bridging accounts hold payments that have been recorded but not yet confirmed by the bank. Clearing them is routine when everything matches. When it does not, a treasury analyst has to locate specific bridged transactions among thousands, perhaps a partner settlement with a particular reference, or a batch of payments from one bank account within a date range.
Without good filtering, that means scrolling through long lists, exporting to spreadsheets, or asking IT for a query. For a telecom operator with high volumes and many counterparties, the time adds up quickly, and investigations that should take minutes take hours. It also makes it harder to answer partners and auditors promptly.
What Microsoft delivered in Finance 10.0.49
Finance 10.0.49 improves filtering when clearing bridge transactions. Users can now narrow bridged transactions by bank account, counterparty, payment reference, cheque number and date range.
These are the attributes treasury teams naturally use when they investigate a payment, so the filters match how people already think about the problem.
Where the value shows up
| Business area | Impact |
|---|---|
| Treasury operations | Faster location of specific bridged transactions for clearing |
| Partner settlements | Quicker answers to roaming, interconnect and dealer payment queries |
| Month-end close | Less time spent working through bridging account lists |
| Data quality | Less reliance on spreadsheet exports for investigation |
| Control | Easier targeted review of specific counterparties or accounts |
A worked scenario
(An illustrative example.) A mobile operator settles roaming charges with dozens of foreign partners through a dedicated bank account. A partner contacts the treasury team to say a settlement made two weeks earlier has not been acknowledged.
Previously, the analyst would have exported the bridging account transactions for the period and searched them in a spreadsheet. Now the analyst filters bridged transactions by the roaming settlement bank account, the partner as counterparty and a two-week date range. The payment appears immediately with its reference, and the analyst confirms its status and clears it once the bank statement line is matched. The partner has an answer the same morning.
Adoption considerations
- Improve reference discipline. Filters are only as useful as the data. Make sure payment references and counterparties are captured consistently at source.
- Train the team. Show treasury analysts how to combine filters for common investigations.
- Standardize saved views. Where your version supports it, set up views for frequent scenarios, such as by settlement account.
- Review volumes. If bridging accounts carry very large backlogs, filtering helps, but a clean-up exercise may still be needed.
- Pair with automation. Combine better filtering with automatic clearing and reconciliation rules so manual investigation is reserved for true exceptions.
The bottom line
In telecoms, treasury efficiency depends on finding the right transaction quickly among very many. Better filtering for bridge transaction clearance is a practical improvement that saves analyst time every day and makes partner queries easier to resolve. Combined with cleaner reconciliation processes, it reduces the effort of running high-volume payment operations. Talk to an experienced Dynamics 365 Finance adviser about how to fit it into your treasury workflow.
Source: Microsoft: What's new or changed in Dynamics 365 Finance 10.0.49