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In today’s data-driven world, generating timely reports is essential for maintaining an agile and effective organization. However, the process of extracting data from multiple sources, transforming the extracted data into the required format and distributing it to the appropriate recipients poses major challenges.
To mitigate this issue, at Cashfree Payments, we streamlined the reporting process with banks by integrating automation tools. This reduced our manual effort significantly and improved accuracy, empowering timely funds-related decision-making and enhancing overall efficiency.
Problem Statement
Generating and sending transaction reports to partner banks involves multiple challenges that require precise customization. Let’s take a look at some of the obstacles in such scenarios:
- Complex New Bank Integrations and Evolving Report Requirements: Setting up the report creation process for new banks is intricate and time-consuming, requiring customized formats and data sources. Also, adapting to evolving bank report requirements, such as adding, updating, or removing columns or fields, demands a no-code, config-driven solution to dynamically define and fetch data. Without such a solution, onboarding new banks gets delayed, further increasing operational efforts.
- Ensuring Data Integrity: Ensuring complete data accuracy is critical, as any oversight could result in financial losses for Cashfree Payments. Implementing robust mechanisms is essential to maintain data integrity and trust, preventing any missing or duplicated entries.
- Timely Report Generation: It is critical to ensure the timely generation of reports by 11 a.m. daily for all banks. Any delay can result in funds being postponed by 24 hours, adversely impacting the fund management.
How did we solve the problem?
To tackle these challenges, we leveraged automation. Our solution revolves around a no-code platform that automates data extraction, transformation, and report generation. A simple configuration setup from our end tells the tool where to gather the data, and how to compile it, and then it generates and sends out the reports. No more manual emailing—just set it and forget it.
Custom Report Generator
This automation tool incorporates various components that work synergistically to automate the report generation process. Let’s delve into the functionality of each component.
Configuration Manager:
Meet the brain of the system. Configuration Manager determines how our reports should be generated, defines the required data sources, specifies report formats, and sets custom data transformation rules. This ensures that our system knows exactly what data to pull and how to structure it.
Dashboard to Manage Report Configuration
Data Aggregator:
The Data Aggregator is the ultimate data collector, gathering information from all the sources defined in the configuration. It consolidates data from various sources, ensuring no information is overlooked. This provides a comprehensive view for seamless report generation.
Transformer:
Once the raw data is aggregated, it must be refined into a report-friendly format. That’s where Transformer steps in. It takes the raw data and, following the user-defined configuration, reshapes it into the desired format. It prepares your data for perfect reporting by restructuring columns, applying calculations, or formatting values.
File Exporter:
Last but not the least, we have File Exporter, which packages the transformed data into the specified report formats like Excel spreadsheets with multiple sheets, CSV files, or plain text documents. It handles all the details of file creation, including custom delimiters. Additionally, it supports password protection for enhanced security. With this tool, generating ready-to-distribute reports in your preferred format is effortless.
Key Features and Benefits of Custom Report Generator
- Ensures Idempotent Transaction Reporting
An operation is considered idempotent if performing it multiple times has the same effect as performing it once. Our generator maintains the state of each transaction to guarantee that transactions included in one report are not added to its future versions. This enhances the accuracy and reliability of the financial reporting processes, maintains data integrity, and prevents duplication
- Fund Management:
Isn’t it obvious that the swift generation of accurate reports means faster settlements? At Cashfree Payments, the use of the Customer Report Generator helps in claiming funds from banks. Given that settlements process is time-sensitive and demands the submission of reports before 11 a.m. daily to ensure timely fund settlements by the banks. The improved cash flow because of timely settlements helps us manage funds better.
- On Demand Report Generation:
The Custom Report Generator supports on-demand report generation, enabling the timely submission of reports. For instance, when refund transactions cannot be processed through bank APIs and must be handled manually, the Custom Report Generator plays pivotal role in promptly sharing these reports with bank. This mitigates the risk of penalties and ensuring efficient refund processing in compliance with RBI regulations.
Wrapping Up
Our system leverages a no-code solution to seamlessly streamline report generation. This approach simplifies the configuration of data sources, as well as transformation, and exportation of data.
Each component plays an integral role in ensuring efficient and smooth report generation. Onboarding new bank reports typically takes only 2-3 hours for configuration and reports are now generated in an average of just 2 minutes, saving nearly 100s of hours monthly.
