Reading settlement cut-offs without guessing

Finance teams often inherit a sentence like “settlement runs at 22:00.” During a financial audit of a payment gateway application, that sentence is a hypothesis, not evidence.

Start with three artefacts: the job schedule that emits settlement files, the bank credit timestamps for the matching nostro, and the merchant payout calendar. If the gateway stamps a batch complete on Saturday while the bank posts Monday, your month-end float is not an error — unless someone already recognised revenue as if cash had moved.

Sample weekends and public holidays deliberately. In Thailand, long holiday corridors around Songkran and New Year regularly expose cut-off scripts that still assume a five-day banking week. Document the rule you tested, not the rule someone remembered in a meeting.