Split Transactions Across Multiple Users

Question

Hi Everyone,

I currently have a long list of P-Card Transactions ( which include post date, vendor name, user name, department, and many other fields) I need to audit. I need to find the number of split transactions by multiple users (against company policy). I was asked to do this with only the following features: cleanse data, filter, join, summarize, and browse. I’m absolutely new to Alteryx. Please help.

apathetichell · Answer

hi @Bea you mention split transactions... Is their a unique transaction identifier field? Using summarize tool- can you group by this and take a count of distinct user names (multiple users - I assume). Then can you filter where that count is greater than 2? If so. you can build your workflow with the tools listed.

Do you get a cool prize if you use the requisite tools?

BrandonB · Answer

Hi @Bea

So if you have a list of transactions, the first question you want to ask yourself is "what do I consider a split transaction"? My first thought would be that transactions made within a certain time frame by a single individual would be candidates for further analysis. You could easily accomplish this with a sort tool and then a multi-row tool where you group by the username and then check the difference between the time and the time of the next row to see if it is smaller than an acceptable time frame to identify a split.

Alternatively, if you truly can't use other tools, you could join the data to itself with a join tool on username. This would allow you to then follow it with a filter where in the filter you built the time comparison and passed through records where the difference between the times was small enough to be considered a potential split.

Finally, one other approach could be to use a summarize tool where you group by username, group by vendor, and count the number of transactions. This would show you usernames that made multiple transactions at a given vendor.

Bringing this back to my first point though, you need to determine what criteria that you will use to determine whether or not something could be considered a split charge. I hope this helps!