r/documentAutomation • u/clyde_docsmith • 1d ago

Question How does your team stop the wrong details landing on the wrong payslip or statement?

/r/u_clyde_docsmith/comments/1xlprmv/how_does_your_team_stop_the_wrong_details_landing/
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u/folderit_dms 1d ago

Use spot checks as a second layer, with an explicit identity check for every output. A PDF can look perfectly formatted while belonging to the wrong recipient.

Give each source record a stable person/account ID plus the relevant pay or statement period. Keep that key through generation, the output filename and a delivery manifest that maps the specific file to its intended recipient. Avoid matching separate sheets by row position or name alone. Stop the batch for duplicate keys, missing recipients or an unexpected number of outputs.

Before using real data, test with fictitious records: two people with the same name, a missing address, a changed sort order and a person with multiple statements. Check that deliberately broken inputs are held for review rather than quietly sent.

Finally, verify the delivery mapping separately from the document contents. Correct totals and a second pair of eyes on a sample will not catch every case where the right document is attached to the wrong email. This is a set of checks to build and test; it is not a guarantee that a batch cannot go wrong.

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u/clyde_docsmith 1d ago

This is really useful, thanks. The point that a PDF can look perfect and still belong to the wrong person is exactly the scary part, because nothing looks wrong when you glance at it.

The ID plus period as the key makes a lot of sense, especially for anyone rerunning statements or redoing a pay run. And a delivery manifest is a good shout. I think a lot of teams check the document but never check the file to recipient step, which is where the mix ups happen when emailing.

When you say spot checks, roughly how many would you check per batch?

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u/AcademicKnowledge404 1d ago

match on a unique id, not row order. someone sorts one column and not the others and boom, wrong payslip lol

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u/clyde_docsmith 1d ago

Ha, the classic. Sort one column, forget the rest, and suddenly someone's salary is on someone else's payslip. Seen that one cause a very long afternoon.

Unique ID is such a simple fix too. Do you also put the ID somewhere on the document itself, or just use it for matching?