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 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 be a higher amount than what is available to spend. For both debit and credit accounts, the ledger balance is the total of all debits and credits posted to the account.

You can get the ledger balance for your accounts in the these places:

• CURRENT BALANCE — Customer Master RDF. This is the ledger balance as of 23:59:59 on the previous day in Galileo System Time. 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.
• ledger_balance — Get Balance response.

The transactions that are included in a ledger balance are listed in the Posted Transactions RDF and in Get Transaction History responses. Neither of those data sources includes 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 that is available to spend for debit accounts and the amount owed to the card issuer for credit accounts.

Debit accounts

This is how the available balance is calculated for a debit account after a cardholder makes a purchase of $225.00. (The starting balance is $1000.00):

Galileo compares any new transaction requests against the 775.00 to determine if there are sufficient funds for the transaction. For example, if an authorization request for 800.00 arrives before the transaction settles, Galileo will deny the request for insufficient funds, despite the fact that the ledger balance is 1000.00.

After the transaction is settled, the available balance remains the same, but the ledger balance now reflects that the transaction has officially been posted to the account.

Credit accounts

This is how the available balance is calculated for a credit account after the cardholder makes a purchase of $335.00. (The card has a credit limit of $10,000.00; available credit is returned by the Get Credit Summary endpoint.):

Galileo populates the available balance field for a credit account with the amount owed to the card issuer. The available credit is the amount remaining of the credit limit minus pending transactions and unpaid balance. If a transaction request arrives for $9800.00 before the balance is paid, Galileo denies the request because it exceeds the available credit amount.

After the transaction is settled, the available credit remains the same, but the ledger balance now shows that the transaction has officially been posted to the account.

When the cardholder pays off the $335.00 balance, the available credit is replenished, and both available balance and ledger balance return to 0.00.

Available balance in the Galileo system

Galileo provides the available balance as follows:

Rolling balance

The rolling balance is the available balance immediately after a transaction is performed. This balance is provided in these places:

^*Before a new account has any activity on its ledger, the endpoint returns rolling_balance: null. After the first transaction, it will return 0 when the available balance is zero.

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Note

The rolling_balance returned by Get All Transaction History represents a new way for the endpoint to calculate the available balance after each transaction. Previously, the endpoint returned calculated_balance and beginning_balance, which did not use a reliable method to calculate the balances. The calculated_balance field is now deprecated and may be removed in the future; in the meantime, it will contain the same value as rolling_balance, and beginning_balance will now be reliably accurate with this new method.

Get Balance fields

In the response from the Get Balance endpoint, Galileo returns these balance-related fields. The endpoint retrieves the balances for all accounts that share the same balance ID, not per PRN or PAN.

Balance amounts

• balance — Same value as available_balance.
• available_balance — As described above.
• 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 (debit accounts only) is not subtracted out. In this case, without means "without including the pending authorizations in the total."
• ledger_balance — As described above.
• balance_without_auths — This is ledger_balance with only the pending_billlpay 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 are those that 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. Note that credit accounts do not support bill pay.

Examples

These examples show how the Get Balance fields are populated after transactions take place.

Example 1

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

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

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

    "response_data": {
        "balance": 950,
        "available_balance": 950,
        "balance_without_pending": "950",
        "currency_code": "840",
        "pending_adjustments": 0,
        "pending_billpay": 0,
        "pending_purchase": 0,
        "ledger_balance": 1000,
        "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,
        "available_balance": 925,
        "balance_without_pending": "950",
        "currency_code": "840",
        "pending_adjustments": 0,
        "pending_billpay": 25,
        "pending_purchase": 0,
        "ledger_balance": 1000,
        "balance_without_auths": 975
    }

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

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

When the $50.00 card purchase settles, Get Balance returns these values:

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

Example 2

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

    "response_data": {
        "balance": 500,
        "available_balance": 500,
        "balance_without_pending": "500",
        "currency_code": "840",
        "pending_adjustments": 0,
        "pending_billpay": 0,
        "pending_purchase": 0,
        "ledger_balance": 500,
        "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,
        "available_balance": 300,
        "balance_without_pending": "300",
        "currency_code": "840",
        "pending_adjustments": 0,
        "pending_billpay": 0,
        "pending_purchase": 0,
        "ledger_balance": 500,
        "balance_without_auths": 300
    }

You call Create Payment to add $300.00 to the account but place a $100.00 hold on the payment. Get Balance returns the following:

    "response_data": {
        "balance": 500,
        "available_balance": 500,
        "balance_without_pending": "500",
        "currency_code": "840",
        "pending_adjustments": 0,
        "pending_billpay": 0,
        "pending_purchase": 0,
        "ledger_balance": 800,
        "balance_without_auths": 500
    }

Example 3

The credit limit is $10,000.00 for a credit account. (Use Get Credit Summary to see the credit limit as well as the amount remaining of the limit.) There are no pending transactions of any kind. Get Balance returns the following:

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

The cardholder makes a $135.00 card purchase. Before the transaction is settled, Get Balance returns the following:

    "response_data": {
        "balance": -135,
        "available_balance": -135,
        "balance_without_pending": "-135",
        "currency_code": "840",
        "pending_adjustments": 0,
        "pending_billpay": 0,
        "pending_purchase": 0,
        "ledger_balance": 0,
        "balance_without_auths": 0
    }

The cardholder makes a $100 payment toward the account balance. Get Balance returns the following:

    "response_data": {
        "balance": -35,
        "available_balance": -35,
        "balance_without_pending": "-35",
        "currency_code": "840",
        "pending_adjustments": 0,
        "pending_billpay": 0,
        "pending_purchase": 0,
        "ledger_balance": 100,
        "balance_without_auths": 100
    }

The $135 purchase settles. Get Balance returns the following:

    "response_data": {
        "balance": -35,
        "available_balance": -35,
        "balance_without_pending": "-35",
        "currency_code": "840",
        "pending_adjustments": 0,
        "pending_billpay": 0,
        "pending_purchase": 0,
        "ledger_balance": -35,
        "balance_without_auths": -35
    }

The cardholder makes a $35 payment to pay off the balance. Get Balance returns the following:

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