The advances in computing which have occurred in the last twenty years have significantly improved the ease of organizing and storing large quantities of data. Information that used to occupy entire shelves can now be stored on a chip the size of a fingertip, and this has not only decreased the amount of space required for that information, but reduced the amount of time it takes to store and retrieve it. Data Matching Even with this technology, however, it can still be difficult to keep data organized, which is where having software to do this for you can come in quite handy.Data match software programs can perform a variety of functions, all of which can help to ease the burden of data organization. These programs work by using the process of deterministic matching to identify matches between two sets of data. This means that parameters for the match can be set by the user, and matches can be based upon different factors. For example, say that you are trying to balance your checking account; you can use a data match software program to find matches based on amount, so that you can identify a particular transaction, or use it to find all of the transactions on a given date.

Some data match software programs can also flag any duplicates, so that users can review the matches and choose to keep or delete bits of identical data. These programs are different from other programs used for the deduplication of data, which usually delete duplicates automatically; the flagging system, by contrast, can be beneficial in situations when the data is important and users need to have more control over what is deleted.Users of data match software programs can set up several different parameters for the matching process. The process occurs using one of several types of mapping, each of which will yield slightly different results. If a user chooses "equal" mapping, then two sets of data will be matched up based on whether the values compared are exactly the same.

This is useful when, for example, one is trying to match invoices with payments, or match transactions to a bank account statement. "Within" mapping is, as it sounds, based on the premise that the values being compared must be within a certain amount of variance, which is set by the user.For instance, if a user is trying to find all transactions that were approximately $100, they would use "within" mapping to find any bits of data that are, say, between $95 and $105. In this case, the variance established by the user would be plus or minus 5. The final type of mapping, "contra" mapping, matches data by finding pairs of numbers that, when combined, are close to zero; the variance, again, is set by the user, similar to "within" mapping.

There is no question that computers are an important part of our everyday lives, especially with all of the recent advances in computing technology. Unfortunately, though computers make record-keeping substantially more convenient and efficient, it can also be just as easy to accumulate duplicate records with computer files as it is to do so with paper. Data match software takes much of the guesswork out of the data reconciliation process, saving users time, effort, and disk space.EasyMatch is a new type of matching software that will help to expedite your end-of-month data reconciliation.