Description: Review the various ways to locate transaction details that may be missing or absent from Lighthouse Transaction Manager (LTM) reports. Research through various reporting resources reasons why your deposit may not match your submitted batch.

Viewing Options

When troubleshooting missing transactions, check the viewing options in LTM. The transaction detail may just be hidden based on what is enabled or not.

At the top of the Current Transactions screen or when viewing Archived Transactions, you have the option to adjust the type of data that is visible on the current screen and subsequently generated transaction reports.

Note: Depending on your user settings, you may have this detail hidden on the page. Click the option for Show Filters at the top right of this page. You should now see your viewing options.

Note: View settings are user-specific, so changing these settings will not impact other user accounts unless the account is shared between multiple people.

General Audit Settings

This is the standard configuration for general auditing. You can change the view settings at the top of the page. There are a series of checkboxes and dropdowns with various view setting options.

Ensure only Sales and Refunds are selected.
Ensure Non-Problems and Problems are selected.
Ensure all accepted card types are selected.
Ensure all the supported capture methods are selected (E.g., Swipe Manual). If unsure, enable all that are listed.
Select Apply Filters after configuring the above.

Internal:

Deposit / Batch Reconciliation

An agent may receive an inquiry from a caller, and the deposit they received or batch reflecting in LTM is different from what they expected.

Probe and obtain a clear understanding of the issue

Financial information is the most important element of reconciliation, so find out what the caller is looking for exactly.

Some good questions to get things started:

What is the period in question?

Try to get a span of exact dates/times.

What quantity of transactions and dollar amount was expected?

Ask for the quantity of transactions and total dollar amount of transactions for the period. If the merchant has a breakdown of these totals by card brand, this can help us isolate the discrepancy to a particular card type.

What quantity of transactions and dollar amount was received?

Review LTM, mReports, and Titan to find the total quantity of transactions and total dollar amount received for the period on our end.

If you cannot readily determine the cause of the discrepancy, click the link below which best matches the situation at hand.

Same Quantity of Transactions - Different Total Amount
Shift4 Received More Transactions Than Expected
Shift4 Received Fewer Transactions Than Expected
The Caller Does Not Have These Figures

Same Quantity of Transactions - Different Total Amount

If the quantity of transactions on our end matches the merchant’s reporting but the total dollar amount does not, we likely received all of their transactions but did not receive the correct amounts.

For accounts that accept tips, obtain the total primary (base) amounts for the day and the total tip amounts. This will tell you possibly where the discrepancy lies.

If you cannot find the discrepancy, offer to send a report from LTM, MReports, or other systems to the caller or assist the caller with obtaining a report from LTM or LBM. The caller should then perform a 'line-by-line' reconciliation where they try to compare what we received against what they expected on an individual transaction level.

Shift4 Received More Transactions Than Expected

If we received more transactions than the caller expected, look for any refunds or other transactions entered on LTM or in MReports by the batch adjust team.

REMEMBER – transactions cloned in LTM or by our batch adjust team do not reflect in the merchant’s reporting.

If you cannot find the discrepancy, offer to send a report from LTM, MReports, or other systems to the caller or assist the caller with obtaining a report from LTM or LBM. The caller should then perform a 'line-by-line' reconciliation where they try to compare what we received against what they expected on an individual transaction level.

Shift4 Received Fewer Transactions Than Expected

We likely did not receive an entire transaction(s) from the merchant's interface.

LTM: Review Voided Transactions for the Period
Occasionally, transactions may void on our end but still record as sales on the POS – often due to communication issues.
LTM: Review Current Transactions
The merchant’s transactions may not have changed from auths to sales, or they may have outstanding problem transactions that need to be resolved.
mReports: Compared Auth Log to Batch Summary
Did we receive more authorizations than the number of transactions that actually batched?

If you cannot find the discrepancy, offer to send a report from LTM, mReports, or other systems to the caller or assist the caller with obtaining a report from LTM or LBM. The caller should then perform a 'line-by-line' reconciliation where they try to compare what we received against what they expected on an individual transaction level.

The Caller Does Not Have These Figures

If the caller does not have the quantity of transactions or total dollar amount of transactions for a period, they should obtain a report containing these details from their interface. This often takes the form of a POS Report, batch report, settlement report, etc. – the merchant may need to go to their dealer or be transferred to another department (per the Department Transfer Guide) to obtain this report.

Optimally, we would like the caller to provide the following details from the report:

a. Number of transactions for the period
b. Total dollar value of transactions for the period
c. The above figures broken down by card type (Visa, MasterCard, AMEX, etc.)

This helps us isolate the card brand of any transaction(s) causing the discrepancy.

Line by Line Auditing / Reconciliation

Occasionally, you may find a discrepancy between your Interface report and your LTM Report. If you cannot identify the discrepancy between your reports, you should perform a line-by-line audit.

Line by Line auditing takes itemized transaction reports from both your Interface System and LTM and crosses off or highlights matching values on each report until there are only mismatched details remaining on either report. This identifies the problem(s) that caused the discrepancy.

You should speak to your Interface Provider about which report would provide an itemized view of your Interface's transactions. As for LTM, this is the Detail report.

The identified values from the two reports are the items causing your discrepancy and should be researched in the Interface software to understand the originally intended outcome (i.e., if it should have been canceled, refunded, an added tip, or needs to be closed out).

Quick and Advanced Search

You can perform a search in LTM using either Quick Search or Advanced Search to review your transactions.

Quick Search might locate the transaction in LTM if the transaction was processed within the year-to-date for Current and Archived Transactions.
- To perform a Quick Search, navigate to the top right of the search box, enter one of the identifying transaction details below, and select Enter or the Quick Search option from the dropdown.
  - Invoice Number
  - Full Card Number, Last Four, or First Four (*XXXX or XXXX*)
  - TrueToken
  - Clerk Number
  - Transaction Amount
To perform an Advanced Search, navigate to the top right of the search box and have them select the Advanced Search option from the dropdown.
- - If you are looking for a transaction between a particular date or within a specific time span, change this information at the top of the search options.
  - Otherwise, leave this blank, and it will look back through two years (to date) of transactions.
    - To perform advanced searches, you need to enter the search criteria at the top of the Advanced Search page.
    - You would want to check the corresponding option in "Fields to search" based on your entered criteria.
    - Under Transactions to Search, enable all options (Sales, Refunds, Authorizations, Voids, Current, and Archives).
  - After filling out your Advanced Search details, select the topmost search option to populate a list based on the criteria set for this search.

Should the mismatched value not be found in the interface but can be found only in LTM, review the Audit Trail to determine the source of the transaction request.

Internal:
Refer to the article, 'How do I enable and collect audit trails from Lighthouse Transaction Manager?'

If the Source Detail shows OTN:[Username] like the picture below, this transaction was placed into LTM directly via online or offline entry, which is why it is not showing on the Interface report, as the user chose to bypass the Interface reporting.
For each edit or update on this invoice, you will have more Source Detail boxes listed.
- The source details that are listed last are the most current edit or posts to occur for this invoice.
Should you not know why this transaction was performed in LTM directly, it is usually best to speak to the user who performed the action.
Any other value here is typically the program or interface name that sent the request to Shift4.

Once the intended outcome has been identified, we can make an adjustment to the system showing the discrepancy. Refer to the article, Adjust Transactions in Lighthouse Transaction Manager.

Note: Adjustments can only occur if the LTM batch has not been closed.

Internal:
For additional information using Quick Search or Advanced Search, refer to Using Quick Search and Advanced Search to Locate Transactions.

Still, Missing?

Some transactions that show on the interface report but not in LTM may be attributed to processing errors concerning timeouts or invalid requests. Rejected transactions, highlighted in red, show as problem transactions in LTM.

If completely missing from the LTM system, the transaction:

It's deleted after two years
Is open (unsettled) in the Interface
Timed-out processing to Shift4 from the local internet
May have bypassed Shift4's systems and used another system for the Transactions capture

What Can We Help You With?

Find Missing Transactions in Lighthouse Transaction Manager