Transaction Classification

Challenges Transaction Classification addresses

Done by hand, reconciliation means gathering unclassified transactions, classification rules and settings, working through 4 separate passes over the same material, then producing classified with confidence, review note and needs a person. None of it is difficult and all of it is exacting, which is the combination people are worst at holding. The errors that matter are the ones a tired reader does not notice, and they surface later — in a reconciliation, or in somebody’s reply. It comes round again every weekday at 08:00, whether or not anyone has the time. As volume grows the work does not get harder, only longer, and the first thing to go is the checking.

Transaction Classification runs that same sequence end to end and returns the result as structured artefacts. What it cannot settle it hands over rather than guesses at, and your correction is kept: it asks “Right classifications?” after every run, and those answers become the set it is measured against. Nothing that moves money, alters a contract or reaches a customer executes without human approval, and every action is written to an audit log. The gain is in the volume that no longer has to be read, not in removing the judgement.

How it works

Step 1: Reading the transactions

First of 4. It works from unclassified transactions, classification rules and settings and feeds the step after it.

Key Tasks:

• Locating the material: It works from unclassified transactions, classification rules and settings, so nothing has to be forwarded, re-keyed or renamed first.
• Handling the format it arrives in: Scanned pages, native documents, spreadsheets and message bodies are all read the same way, including layouts where the relevant figure sits inside a table rather than a labelled field.
• Pulling the fields that matter: Only the fields the rest of the run needs are extracted. What cannot be read confidently is recorded as unread rather than filled in with a best guess.

Outcome:

• Fields extracted: The fields are available to the steps that follow, with anything unreadable listed rather than silently defaulted — which is what stops a bad extraction becoming a confident wrong answer three steps later.

Step 2: Reading the classification rules

Step 2 of 4. It takes what step 1 produced and hands its result to step 3.

Key Tasks:

• Reading the classification rules specifically: This pass is scoped to the classification rules rather than to the document as a whole, so a field that appears in more than one place is taken from the one that governs.
• Keeping the original alongside: Each extracted value stays linked to where it was found, so a figure that looks wrong can be checked against the source rather than re-entered.
• Locating the material: It works from what step 1 produced, so nothing has to be forwarded, re-keyed or renamed first.

Outcome:

• The classification rules captured: The fields are available to the steps that follow, with anything unreadable listed rather than silently defaulted — which is what stops a bad extraction becoming a confident wrong answer three steps later.

Step 3: Classifying each transaction

Step 3 of 4. It takes what step 2 produced and hands its result to step 4.

Key Tasks:

• Reading each item on its own terms: Classification is from the content rather than from a keyword list, so items phrased in a way nobody anticipated still reach the right reconciliation bucket.
• Applying the same boundaries every time: The definitions do not drift between runs, which is what makes a count from this month comparable to one from last.
• Keeping the confidence: A borderline item is assigned with its confidence recorded rather than filed away as certain.

Outcome:

• Confidently classified: The item is grouped and counted, and moves on without review.
• Below the confidence threshold: It is held for a person rather than placed in the closest bucket — the wrong bucket is worse than an unfilled one, because it disappears into a count.

Step 4: Writing the review note

Last of 4. It takes what step 3 produced and produces classified with confidence and review note.

Key Tasks:

• Writing from the run, not from a template: The text is built from what this run actually found, so two reconciliation outputs differ where the underlying records differ.
• Leading with what needs a decision: The exceptions come first and the routine detail follows, because the reader is deciding rather than reading.
• Staying inside the evidence: Nothing appears in the text that is not supported by a record the run examined. Gaps are stated as gaps.

Outcome:

• Artefact ready: A finished artefact, traceable line by line to the records behind it, ready for a person to accept or correct.

Step 5: Your review, and what it changes

The run ends with a person, not with a result being filed.

Key Tasks:

• Asking a specific question: It asks “Right classifications?” rather than for a rating. A question about this run is answerable; a score out of five is not.
• Keeping the correction: What you change is recorded against the case that produced it, so the disagreement is retrievable rather than absorbed.
• Building the evaluation set: Those cases become what the agent is measured on. It is scored against your judgement rather than against a general benchmark.

Outcome:

• A measured agent, not an assumed one: The cases Transaction Classification handles well and the cases it does not are both visible, and the second list is the one that decides what changes. Nothing is retrained silently on the back of a single correction.

Why use Transaction Classification?

• Scored, with the working shown: Scores arrive with their component criteria rather than as a single number, so you can disagree with a criterion instead of only with the total — and two items with the same profile score the same on every run.
• A batch is one run, not a hundred: It works the whole set in a single pass and returns a row per item with its verdict, so the volume that needs no attention never has to be opened.
• Takes documents as they arrive: Scanned pages, native files and awkward layouts are read as they are. Nothing has to be renamed, re-keyed or converted into a template before a run.
• Runs without being remembered: It starts every weekday at 08:00, on its own. The work stops depending on whoever used to carry it in their calendar.
• Corrected by the people using it: After each run it asks “Right classifications?”. Those answers become the evaluation set, which means it is measured against your judgement rather than ours.