What WiseCHECK IQ checks

How is each finding weighted?

Every rule has a stated severity, and the severities decide the verdict. STRICT blocks the item and sends it to the exception queue. SOFT doesn't block on its own; it sends the item to a person, who looks before anything posts. INFO is recorded and never blocks: the condition is real, but it says nothing against this particular item.

INFO matters more than it looks. A validator that sends every payroll check to review because the stub lists taxes but not the 401(k) line hasn't made anyone safer; it has taught the reviewer to click through. So the rule self-test includes ordinary documents that must not trigger a finding, alongside the cases that must.

Where a rule's severity depends on the situation, the table says which case gets which.

Which MICR and routing number rules run?

The MICR line is the one part of a check built to be machine-read, and the routing number is the one identifier on it with a check digit. WiseCHECK IQ locates the routing field by the symbols that enclose it, not by counting characters from the edge, so business, personal and foreign-drawn checks share one parser.

How are the courtesy and legal amounts compared?

The amount is written twice on the face, in numerals (the courtesy amount) and in words (the legal amount). WiseCHECK IQ parses the words with its own parser, so the two are independent readings. UCC 3-114 says the words govern when they disagree; operationally a disagreement is also the signature of check washing, so the item is never auto-posted.

Which date rules apply, and to which checks?

Staleness isn't one rule. UCC 4-404 lets a bank refuse a check more than six months old without making it void, and it doesn't reach cashier's checks or money orders. A US Treasury check is void after one year. WiseCHECK IQ applies the rule that fits the instrument, measured against the six-month anniversary date rather than a count of days.

Date rules need a date to measure against. WiseCHECK IQ takes the presentment date as an input and every trace states the one it used.

What does WiseCHECK IQ check about the payee and signature?

How does WiseCHECK IQ protect the account number?

The account number has no check digit and, on most stock, no printed duplicate, yet it decides which account the money leaves. WiseCHECK IQ gives it every test the document allows.

The provenance test does not demand a particular split of the on-us field. Banks split it in different ways, and two issuers can split it in opposite directions and both be right. It asks only whether the digits could have come off that line.

The two-reader rule needs two readings. The engine live today reads once, so instead it reports "account has no independent witness", and the FlexiCapture handler never overwrites an account number FlexiCapture already read. In a batch, several checks with the same routing number and an identical on-us field are the same account at the same bank; one whose readers agreed can settle the others, but only by choosing between values their own readers proposed.

Which fraud signals does WiseCHECK IQ raise?

The duplicate and copy-comparison rules work across the items processed together in a batch. The FlexiCapture backup call reads one page at a time, so they don't run there, and matching against your deposit history isn't built yet.

The routing directory holds 19,010 routing numbers and is frozen at 2018-12-04, because the public mirror it is built from stopped updating then. Bank names move through mergers, so a name check against a stale directory would flag legitimate checks as counterfeits. WiseCHECK IQ reports the mismatch as INFO until a licensed, current feed is in place.

How is a check matched to its stub?

The stub carries the invoice numbers a payment has to be applied to, and when its lines add up it proves the amount. But the arithmetic differs by stub type: an AP remittance's lines are the payment, a payroll stub's earnings add up to gross pay, and a royalty statement's lines may pay nothing at all. WiseCHECK IQ applies the identity that fits the stub.

What about endorsements on the back?

Endorsement rules depend on how the item arrived, and WiseCHECK IQ takes the deposit channel as an input rather than guessing. On a remote-deposit item a missing restrictive endorsement blocks, because that endorsement is what stops the same image being deposited twice. On an issuer's file copy an unendorsed back is normal.

The FlexiCapture backup call sends only the front of the check, so these rules run only when the back is submitted too.

Which rules have never fired on a real check?

A rule that has only ever run in its own test is a rule whose behavior on real documents is unmeasured, so we list them. On the 30-item evaluation corpus these have not fired on real input: the date rules (every item was evaluated at its presentment date), the non-US routing rules, the signature-count rule, the rule comparing our parse of the words with the reader's, the serial-in-MICR rule, most of the check-to-stub rules, the endorsement rules beyond "is there one", the alteration rule (same serial, different amount) and the image-replacement rule. Each is implemented and covered by the self-test. See Results for what else we haven't measured.