How to Automate Report Balancing Across Windows and IBM i Servers

Watch this short video to see a live demo of how easy report balancing can be when using our integrated solution of Robot Schedule Enterprise and Automate.

Now, here's the whole story.

We live in a world of shared data. External websites, trading partners, financial institutions, or other divisions within the same company have files that contain data that you need. Some examples include electronic funds transfers (EFTs), batch order files, general ledger transactions, or point of sale (POS) transactions.

These files are often formatted as a spreadsheet, CSV, or flat file located on a server outside IBM i and are typically processed in batch jobs one or more times per day. Oftentimes, they also need to be “balanced” by comparing the total line on the original file to a total after the batch has been processed and before continuing onto the next step in the process flow.

But how reliable is the report balancing process if it’s performed manually?

If your staff member who’s responsible for doing the balancing takes a day off or calls in sick, who takes their place? Is this a single point of failure? Has there ever been a mistake in comparing these numbers?

There is a better way. Automate report balancing.

Use Robot Schedule Enterprise and Automate to fully automate the mundane and error prone process of report balancing in three, easy steps:

1. Implement file event monitoring and reactivity. When the file is ready for processing, Robot will detect that the file is available either in locally or on another server, can transfer the file onto IBM i, and will trigger the appropriate reactive job to process the file immediately or at a pre-determined time.
2. Use Robot Schedule Enterprise interface to Automate. Use Automate’s pre-defined automation tasks to scan the IBM i report, spreadsheet, CSV, and/or flat file that needs to be compared on the source and target. If they match, continue processing automatically; if not, send out notification
3. Sit back and relax. No intervention needed unless the two files don’t match.

Integrating Robot Schedule Enterprise and Automate in your environment will give you all the power you need to balance those critical reports together, trigger the correct job steps when everything is in balance, and send out notification when they don’t.