Reconciliation Overview

Reconciliation is the process of confirming that payments recorded in your system match those processed and settled through PaymentExpress. This overview introduces how reconciliation works, why it’s important, and the tools available to help you verify and balance transactions across all payment channels.

At a high level, reconciliation ensures that:

Each payment you initiate through PaymentExpress is tracked from creation to completion.
Your internal records reflect the same results that PaymentExpress reports.
Totals, fees, and tender types balance across different solutions.

Understanding Reconciliation

When a payment is completed, PaymentExpress generates data confirming the outcome of that transaction. You can use this data to confirm totals, investigate exceptions, or trigger downstream financial processes.

Reconciliation can be performed in three complementary ways:

Postbacks: Real-time notifications that inform your system as soon as a payment succeeds.
Payment Activity Files: Batch reports that summarize all payment activity for a given period.
Payment Lookup API: Real-time details about the status of a completed payment.

All methods provide verified data that allows you to tie every payment back to your own identifiers and records.

The Role of Postbacks

Postbacks are immediate HTTPS messages sent to your configured endpoint when customers complete a payment successfully. They allow your application to:

Instantly confirm that a transaction has been completed.
Update customer-facing systems without waiting for batch files to be processed.
Store PaymentExpress identifiers for future reconciliation.

Postbacks are ideal for real-time visibility. Refer to the Postbacks page for the full schema and implementation details.

The Role of Payment Activity Files

Payment Activity Files can provide a comprehensive view of payment activity across all your PaymentExpress integrations. They can include the same identifiers and totals referenced in postbacks, but in a single file that represents an entire day’s payments.

These files serve as the authoritative record of payment outcomes and are typically used for:

End-of-day balancing.
Internal or external reporting validation with a system of record.
Feeding accounting and treasury systems.

Refer to the Payment Activity Files page for details on structure, timing, and field definitions.

The Role of Payment Lookup APIs

While Postbacks and Payment Activity Files provide automatic data delivery, the Payment Lookup APIs give you a way to retrieve payment data on demand. They allow your application to query PaymentExpress for any paymentId and receive the current status or a detailed record of that transaction.

Use the Payment Lookup APIs to:

Confirm the outcome of a payment that may not yet appear in your daily file.
Reconcile an individual transaction when troubleshooting customer inquiries.
Verify refund or reversal status before performing additional actions.
Cross-check data during system outages or when files are not retrieved.

In short, the Payment Lookup APIs are your real-time verification tool, providing single-payment clarity that complements your broader reconciliation process. For endpoint definitions and examples, see the Post Payment Operations documentation.