Account Balances

The two balance types that you will most often encounter on the Galileo platform are:

• Ledger balance
• Available balance

Ledger balance

In standard banking terminology, the "ledger balance" is the total of all transactions—credit and debit—that have officially been posted to an account. The ledger balance does not factor in pending transactions such as authorization holds or account holds, which means that the ledger balance can show a higher amount than what is available to spend.

You can get the ledger balance for your accounts in the CURRENT BALANCE field of the Customer Master RDF. This is the ledger balance as of 23:59:59 on the previous day. However, an account is included in a Customer Master RDF only if the account is new or if there was a change to the account during the previous day, including a balance change.

The transactions that are included in a ledger balance are provided in the Posted Transactions RDF and by Get Transaction History. Neither of those data sources returns pending transactions—they include only transactions that have been officially posted.

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Note

If you are the system of record, Galileo's balance fields may or may not be accurate, depending on the method you use to keep Galileo up-to-date with account balances.

Available balance

The balance type that Galileo most commonly provides is the "available balance," which is also called the "open to buy" or OTB in some contexts. The available balance is the amount of funds that are available to spend.

This balance is calculated by totaling the pending transactions (such as unsettled authorizations, pending billpay, payment and account holds) and subtracting them from the ledger balance.

For example, if the ledger balance is 1000.00, and there are three authorization holds (unsettled authorizations) totalling 225.00, then the available balance is 775.00. Galileo compares any new transactions against the 775.00 to determine if there are sufficient funds for the transaction. For example, if a transaction for 800.00 arrives, Galileo will report insufficient funds, despite the fact that the ledger balance is 1000.00.

Galileo provides the available balance as follows:

Get Balance fields

In the response from the Get Balance endpoint, Galileo returns six balance-related fields.

Balance amounts

• balance — This value depends on whether the account is credit or debit.
  • Debit accounts. The available balance. This is the value to display on your app or web site when your customers want to know how much they have available to spend.
  • Credit accounts. The unpaid balance.
• balance_without_pending — String, not float. This is the amount in balance with only the authorization holds and account/transaction holds subtracted out. The pending_billpay amount is not subtracted out. In this case, without means "without including the pending authorizations in the total."
• balance_without_auths — This is the ledger balance with only the pending_ transactions and account/transaction holds subtracted out. In this case, without means "without subtracting out the pending authorizations." You must set provider parameter BWOOA to return this value.

Pending balances

• pending_adjustments
• pending_billpay
• pending_purchase

The pending_adjustments and pending_purchase fields represent deprecated functions, so those fields will always contain 0 (zero).

Pending billpay transactions have been created but not adjusted from the customer account yet. The Balance checks and ledger adjustment section in Creating a Billpay Transaction details the timing of billpay creation versus posting. In short, billpay transactions typically do not pend for longer than 29 minutes, if at all.

Example 1

The ledger balance is 1000.00. There are no pending transactions of any kind. Get Balance returns the following:

    "response_data": {
        "balance": 1000,
        "balance_without_pending": "1000",
        "currency_code": "840",
        "pending_adjustments": 0,
        "pending_billpay": 0,
        "pending_purchase": 0,
        "balance_without_auths": 1000
    }

The account holder makes a 50.00 card purchase. Before the transaction is settled, Get Balance returns the following:

    "response_data": {
        "balance": 950,
        "balance_without_pending": "950",
        "currency_code": "840",
        "pending_adjustments": 0,
        "pending_billpay": 0,
        "pending_purchase": 0,
        "balance_without_auths": 1000
    }

The account holder initiates a billpay transaction for 25.00. Before the billpay binary adjusts the amount from the account (which triggers BPAY: billpay), Get Balance returns the following:

"response_data": {
        "balance": 925,
        "balance_without_pending": "950",
        "currency_code": "840",
        "pending_adjustments": 0,
        "pending_billpay": 25,
        "pending_purchase": 0,
        "balance_without_auths": 975
    }

After the billpay binary adjusts the amount from the account, Get Balance returns these values:

"response_data": {
        "balance": 925,
        "balance_without_pending": "925",
        "currency_code": "840",
        "pending_adjustments": 0,
        "pending_billpay": 0,
        "pending_purchase": 0,
        "balance_without_auths": 975
    }

Example 2

The ledger balance is 500.00. There are no pending transactions of any kind. Get Balance returns the following:

    "response_data": {
        "balance": 500,
        "balance_without_pending": "500",
        "currency_code": "840",
        "pending_adjustments": 0,
        "pending_billpay": 0,
        "pending_purchase": 0,
        "balance_without_auths": 500
    }

For administrative reasons you put a 200.00 hold on the account using Create Hold. Get Balance returns the following:

    "response_data": {
        "balance": 300,
        "balance_without_pending": "300",
        "currency_code": "840",
        "pending_adjustments": 0,
        "pending_billpay": 0,
        "pending_purchase": 0,
        "balance_without_auths": 300
    }

You call Create Payment to add 300.00 to the account but place a 200.00 hold on the payment. Get Balance returns the following:

    "response_data": {
        "balance": 400,
        "balance_without_pending": "400",
        "currency_code": "840",
        "pending_adjustments": 0,
        "pending_billpay": 0,
        "pending_purchase": 0,
        "balance_without_auths": 400
    }