Wang Hao, who graduated from university in 2021, entered a joint-stock bank and became a Guan Peisheng.
Like the training path of most joint-stock banks, newcomer Wang Hao has to spend a one-year rotation first. The Department where he works is the bank office. The office is the back office, which is mainly responsible for providing logistics support to the front office marketing department and the middle office product department. “My job is mainly to count tables and sort out documents. There is too much repetitive work.” Wang Hao complained.
On December 30, several banks announced that they would carry out year-end final accounts, and the system would not be able to conduct normal transactions during the period. More media reports said that some banks also held year-end final accounts mobilization meetings before and after that day. Year end final accounts are the end of the year period that banks must complete.
Wang Hao’s Bank is no exception. “Now all departments are working overtime, but the front desk colleagues such as the sales department are the busiest. Half of our office also has to work overtime to provide support, including material subsidies, for the year-end final accounts.” He told the times weekly.
There are no fresh students like Wang Hao in the overtime list. Wang haochang breathed a sigh of relief. Not participating in the year-end final accounts means that he can spend a relatively leisurely New Year’s day.
Bankers regard year-end accounts as a scourge. Yang Yan works in the accounting department of a large state-owned bank. She didn’t go through the age when the year-end accounts were all written and written. When participating in the bank’s year-end settlement, the bank’s core system has been able to simplify the process of year-end settlement to a certain extent, and the computer is gradually being improved. However, there are still a large number of accounts that need to be carried forward manually.
“I have to work overtime at the end of the year. When I get home, the child has gone to bed. It happens every year.” Yang Yan said.
With the rapid development of technology, the bank’s final settlement system and working mode are evolving, and the efficiency of year-end final settlement is also improving rapidly. From missing the new year, catching the last bus of the new year, and then calmly welcoming the new year, the busy year-end accounts of bankers will eventually become history.
“set off firecrackers when the year-end final accounts are completed”
The so-called year-end final accounts, that is, according to the accounting data retained by the bank, check all current accounts in the past year, including cash and accounting vouchers, must be consistent with the accounts and facts, and the project is huge.
For banks, “balancing” (i.e. carrying forward balance of accounting accounts) is a complex and interrelated major project. From bottom to top, the “balancing” of bank outlets is the basis for the “balancing” of sub branches, which is the basis of branches, and so on, and the information is collected to the head office. After the head office confirms that there is no error, the year-end final accounts will come to an end.
In the age of underdeveloped science and technology, year-end final accounts are extremely labor-intensive. Gao Mei joined a large state-owned bank in the late 1980s. She is an “old banker” who has been in the bank for more than 30 years. At present, she works as an operation post in the bank.
Specifically, the bank is divided into savings side and accounting side by business. The savings side is usually mainly responsible for cash business, including personal deposits and small cash business of the company. The accounting side is mainly responsible for non cash business, including company transfer, etc. In other words, the “balance account” needs to be carried forward and balanced by the business accounting accounts at both ends.
“In the past, the year-end settlement was the bank’s cross year.” Gao Mei told reporters, “to confirm repeatedly, we usually have to do three rounds of account balancing. The last round is almost two o’clock in the morning, and we have to set off firecrackers. I’m really impressed.”
Chen Ting, 33, is the operation process monitoring post of a joint-stock bank. This is the sixth year-end final settlement she participated in. The year-end accounts she participated in were escorted by computer, and she never worked overtime to the dark. The so-called computerization means that the bank’s core system can automatically store all current account information within a year, and automatically “balance” at the end of the year to complete most of the year-end final accounts.
She also “never had a complete new year’s Day”. As a process monitoring post, on the first day of each year, Chen Ting will go to the bank to export the statements before and after carry forward and forward them to the science and technology department. After collecting the statements of each branch, the science and Technology Department will uniformly generate the year-end final accounts report.
In order not to affect the normal use of No. 1 trading system, all these processes need to be completed before 6 a.m., which means that Chen Ting often goes to the bank at 4 a.m. “On the evening of December 31, even if you don’t have to work late at night, you won’t go to bed early. After all, you have to cross the new year.” Chen Ting smiled.
become feelings in the new year in the bank
The bank’s year-end accounts are much simpler.
Gao Mei said that at present, there is no need to work overtime on the year-end settlement for so long. Only in very few cases, for example, customers have sudden settlement needs or need to deal with inter-bank settlement, but it usually ends before 12 p.m.
There are still some bankers who will choose to stick to it, but unlike in the past, the reason why they stick to it is not the complicated work of year-end final accounts, but the red envelope of leaders.
It is unknown when this tradition began, but it has become a practice for leaders to send red envelopes to employees who still stick to their posts at zero, ranging from bank outlets to head office departments. Red envelopes are big and small, but “it’s more a feeling”, Yang Yan said with a smile.
What makes the year-end settlement simple is the accumulation of bank settlement experience and the progress of science and technology.
In terms of optimizing the work plan of year-end final accounts, banks have different practices, but one common feature is to plan ahead, that is, the so-called normalization of year-end final accounts.
Before December 31, all outlets have started preparations.
The accounting department of a provincial branch of a large state-owned bank disclosed to the reporter of the times weekly that it had already begun to check the inventory of its subordinate outlets and sub branches. The branch operation Department is responsible for general scale outlets, while for large-scale branches, the competent president of the branch shall personally check the inventory. “At the end of each year, the president in charge will personally go to the scene and count the cash and vouchers at least once.” These people said.
In addition to the state-owned bank, a joint-stock bank has started the preparation of year-end final accounts in early December. Since the beginning of December, the branch has carried out trial calculation on all accounts of the branch every week, corrected errors and omissions in the accounts on the day of trial calculation, and carried forward immediately. On the day of year-end settlement, the workload of the head office and branches has been greatly reduced.
Technological progress is the biggest contributor to reducing the workload of year-end final accounts.
Yang Yan said that with the support of computer, the “balance account” has realized full digital operation. Taking a customer as an example, all the information such as the amount of the customer’s account is recorded in the banking system. On the day of final settlement, it can be carried forward automatically according to the preset accounting standards, which not only saves a lot of manpower, but also reduces the occurrence of errors and omissions.
The part requiring manual intervention is only some special cases that do not apply to general accounting standards, which is much easier than in the past.
The acceleration of year-end final accounts is far more than that. According to the data of the CBRC, the total investment in information technology of Bank Of China Limited(601988) institutions in 2020 was 207.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20%, with an unprecedented scale. In the proportion of the whole banking revenue, the proportion of bank technology investment has exceeded 2%, close to 3%, and the proportion of some banks has exceeded 4%. Among them, most of the science and technology funds are invested in the R & D and upgrading of core systems.
(Wang Hao, Gao Mei, Chen ting and Yang Yan are pseudonyms in the text)
(times weekly)
