Date:
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2.1
FUJ00084744
FUJ00084744
Local Suspense Problem
10/05/2013 09:06:00
Management Summary
The purpose of this note is to provide a management level summary of the “Local
Suspense” problem that was identified earlier this year and was seen to impact 14 of
the current Horizon Branches.
The root case of the problem was that under some specific, rare circumstances some
temporary data used in calculating the Local Suspense was not deleted when it should
have been, and so was erroneously re-used a year later. When the SPMR was asked to
clear Local Suspense the actual (ie incorrect) amount was recorded in the Audit Trail.
This means that there was no corruption in the audit trail and it accurately reflects the
transactions that occurred in the Branch.
If the BTS from the previous period was taken to provide a set of Opening Balances
and all transactions that were logged to the audit trail during the period were taken as
adjustments, then this would show the correct value that should be in the Local
Suspense account.
Detailed Description
Background
Local Suspense is a mechanism whereby any gains or losses from a Stock Unit can be
rolled up at a Branch Level, so that the last Stock Unit to Balance within a Trading
Period can clear all the individual discrepancies in a single transaction.
This is achieved by the various Stock Units calculating the net value of all their gains
and losses, and Horizon then generates transactions such that the discrepancies sum to
zero and the balance is posted to a gain / loss Local Suspense account. This is visible
on the Stock Unit Balance report that is produced by Horizon every time the Stock
Unit is rolled over into a new Trading Period.
As well as passing these Local Suspense transactions to the normal accounting tables
that are used to update POL SAP and Credence, they are also written to a table in the
Branch Database that is used to support the printing of the Branch Trading Statement
(BTS) after that Branch has been fully Balanced.
When the last (or only) Stock Unit in a Branch is rolled over into a new Trading
Period, then all these Local Suspense values are summed and an aggregate gain or loss
for the branch is calculated. The SPMR is then asked how they propose to clear this
gain or loss and the appropriate accounting transactions are generated. Details of the
changes to the Local Suspense account are again written to the Branch Database both
for reporting to Post Office Ltd’s back end systems and also for the production of the
BTS.
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2.4
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The Problem
Data in the Branch Database is regularly archived and then deleted when it is no longer
required. Different tables have different rules concerning exactly how long data is
retained and when it is archived and deleted.
In 2011 a problem was found with the archiving strategy related to Stock Units that
have been deleted in a Branch. A consequence of this is that some changes were made
to the archiving strategy on 3" July 2011. An unintended consequence of this change
was that any Branch that deleted a Stock Unit at the end of 2010 which had local
suspense transaction in that Stock Unit before it was deleted were left in the table used
for constructing the BTS. This meant that as Trading Periods cycle around each year,
these BTS records became visible in 2011 when the same Trading Period was reached.
The affect of these old records was that when the BTS was being produced an
incorrect value was calculated for printing on the report. However as well as that an
incorrect figure was generated for the Opening Balance of the Local Suspense
Account for the following period. This amount corresponded to the value of the
historical record.
When the next Trading Period was balanced, then this incorrect Opening Figure would
result in the total value for Local Suspense being calculated incorrectly and the SPMR
being asked to make good an incorrect amount. It is at this point that transactions
would be generated into the audit trail reflecting the fact that the SPMR had cleared
the Local Suspense account for an incorrect amount.
This problem was not reported to Fujitsu in 2011 and only affected a small number of
Branches and only for a single Trading Period.
At the same Trading Period in 2012, the problem re-occurred and this time one of the
affect Branches reported the problem resulting in a detailed analysis of this issue and
finding the orphaned BTS records.
Rectification Actions
When the problem was investigated earlier this year, 14 Branches were identified that
had such historical records in the table used to generate the BTS report (which is the
root cause of the problem). (5 Branches had losses and 7 had gains and 2 branches
that had both a loss and a gain. One loss was for £9,800, one gain for £3,100 and the
rest were less than £161.)
These records have now been manually deleted so that they do not cause a further
issue in future years. Also two further checks have been identified during the
balancing process each of which indicate a situation associated with this problem, so
that should those situations arise in the future, then alerts would be raised to indicate
to support staff that a situation that should never occur has occurred and thus trigger
immediate investigation. These changes are being progressed through the normal
support route for a maintenance release of the Horizon counter code.
Affected Branches
The following table lists the affected Branches and the amounts:
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Branc I Name Amount
002647 I Aberystwyth £6.71
002840 I Inverness £140.61
010007 I East Dulwich -£0.01
011458 I Willen Village -
£9,799.88
012004 I Lower Edmonton £16.12
054011 I Lower Regent Street I £3.34
101832 _I Dundas £5.84
104937 I Grange £0.03
104937 I Grange -£49.65
155025 I Hounslow £113.14
156715 I Gilford £11.55
211844 I Rosyth Terminus £36.20
211844 I Rosyth Terminus £77.97
243242 I Wardles Lane £0.51
266418 I Bowness Road £3,186.70
297611 I Merthyr Dyfan £160.92
A negative amount signifies a loss.
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