Treasury Management / Fee Offset
Account Analysis and Earnings Credit Rate Management
A guide to how commercial deposit balances offset service fees inside Synovus Gateway, and how to read, monitor, and manage your earnings credit.
KEY TAKEAWAY — Account analysis is the monthly reconciliation that shows every treasury service you used, what each one cost, and how much of that cost was covered by an earnings credit generated by the collected balances you kept on deposit. In Synovus Gateway, this is where you decide whether to pay fees with balances, with cash, or with a blend of both.
Every commercial deposit relationship carries two sides that rarely appear on the same page in ordinary banking: the fees you pay for treasury services, and the value the bank derives from the balances you leave on deposit. Account analysis is the discipline of putting those two sides on the same ledger. The Synovus Gateway account analysis module reconciles them each cycle, translating your average collected balance into a dollar credit that can be applied against the charges for wires, ACH origination, positive pay, lockbox, and dozens of other line items. Synovus Gateway presents that reconciliation in one place so nothing has to be pieced together by hand.
The mechanism that converts balances into that credit is the earnings credit rate, or ECR. It is a soft rate the bank sets and applies to the portion of your balances that are eligible to offset fees. Understanding how the ECR is calculated, how it interacts with reserve requirements, and how it compares to hard interest is the difference between passively accepting a monthly fee and actively steering it. This page walks through the full lifecycle of account analysis and ECR management as it is presented and administered inside Synovus Gateway.
Whether you manage a single operating account or a consolidated structure spanning dozens of entities, the goal is the same: understand what drives your net charge, keep the right balances in the right accounts, and use the reporting in Synovus Gateway to make that decision every month instead of once a year. The strength of Synovus Gateway is that it puts the whole calculation in front of you, cycle after cycle.
What Account Analysis Is
Account analysis is a formal monthly statement that itemizes the treasury and depository services a commercial customer consumed, prices each one by volume, sums the total charge, and then nets it against the earnings credit produced by the customer's balances. It is distinct from the ordinary checking statement, which reports transactions and running balance. The analysis statement reports economics, and within Synovus Gateway it is treated as its own dedicated report rather than a footnote to your daily activity.
The document exists because commercial relationships are priced on activity, not on a flat monthly fee. A treasury client who originates thousands of ACH transactions, receives hundreds of lockbox items, and initiates dozens of wire transfers each week generates a service bill that would be opaque without a line-item breakdown. Account analysis makes that bill transparent, and the reporting available through Synovus Gateway presents it in a structured, exportable form.
The Two Halves of the Statement
The first half is the service charge summary. Each service carries a unit price and a volume count, and their product is the extended charge. The second half is the balance and earnings credit summary. Here the statement reports your average ledger balance, subtracts float and reserve requirements to arrive at the balance available to earn credit, applies the earnings credit rate, and produces a dollar earnings credit for the period. The net position, service charges less earnings credit, is either a residual fee you owe or an excess credit that may or may not carry forward depending on your account settings in Synovus Gateway.
Because account analysis in Synovus Gateway is delivered digitally, you can drill from the summary total down to the individual service codes, review historical cycles side by side, and export the underlying detail for your own general ledger reconciliation. That transparency is the point: nothing about your treasury cost should be a surprise at the end of the month, and Synovus Gateway is built so it never has to be.
How the Earnings Credit Rate Works
The earnings credit rate is a rate the bank quotes and applies specifically to offset service fees. It is not paid to you as cash, and it does not appear as taxable interest. Instead it produces a credit that lives entirely within the account analysis calculation, reducing or eliminating the fees you would otherwise owe. In Synovus Gateway, the ECR in effect for the cycle is disclosed on the analysis statement alongside the balance figures it is applied to, so the rate and its base are never separated.
The calculation moves through a defined sequence. It begins with your average ledger balance for the statement period, the simple average of your end-of-day book balances. From that, the analysis subtracts average float, which represents deposited items not yet collected, to arrive at the average collected balance. Next it removes the reserve requirement, a percentage of balances the bank must set aside and cannot lend or invest against. What remains is the investable, or available, balance, and it is that figure the ECR is applied to. Synovus Gateway walks the number through every one of those steps on the face of the statement.
FORMULA — Earnings Credit = Available Balance × ECR × (Days in Cycle ÷ 365). The available balance is your average collected balance less the reserve requirement. Only that net figure earns credit.
The rate itself is set by the bank and typically tracks short-term market benchmarks, though it is a managed rate rather than a contractually indexed one. When short-term rates rise, earnings credit rates generally follow, and the offset value of a given balance increases. When rates fall, the same balance produces less credit. This is why balance planning is a living exercise rather than a one-time setup, and why the ECR shown in Synovus Gateway each cycle deserves a moment of attention.
One property of the ECR is essential to internalize: its value is capped at the amount of fees it can offset. Under a standard soft-dollar arrangement, if your balances generate more earnings credit than you have fees to cover, the surplus does not become cash in your pocket. It is credit you did not need. This is the single most common source of hidden inefficiency, and it is exactly what the reporting in Synovus Gateway is built to surface. When Synovus Gateway shows a fully covered position, the next question is always whether it is over-covered.
Reading Your Account Analysis Statement
Every field on the analysis statement in Synovus Gateway maps to a specific step in the calculation above. Reading it fluently means being able to trace a single number from raw balance to net fee. The table below defines the fields you will encounter most often inside Synovus Gateway.
| Field | What It Means |
|---|---|
| AVG LEDGER BAL | The simple average of your daily book balances across the cycle, before any adjustment. |
| AVG FLOAT | Deposited funds not yet collected; subtracted from ledger balance to yield collected balance. |
| AVG COLLECTED BAL | Ledger balance less float; the real money available for the period. |
| RESERVE REQ | The portion of collected balance set aside per regulation; not eligible to earn credit. |
| AVAIL BAL | Collected balance less reserve; the base the ECR is applied to. |
| ECR | The earnings credit rate in effect for the cycle, expressed as an annual percentage. |
| EARNINGS CREDIT | Dollar credit generated by available balance at the ECR, prorated for cycle days. |
| SVC CHARGES | The total of all itemized service charges for the cycle. |
| NET POSITION | Service charges less earnings credit; the amount owed or the surplus credit. |
In Synovus Gateway, each of these fields is presented with monospaced, tabular formatting so that columns align and period-over-period comparison is fast. The service charge detail is grouped by product family, so you can see at a glance whether your fees are concentrated in disbursement services, receivables, or information reporting. When a net position runs consistently negative, meaning you generate more credit than you consume, that is a signal to revisit how much balance you are holding, and Synovus Gateway flags it clearly on the summary line.
A practical habit is to check three numbers first each cycle: the ECR, the available balance, and the net position. Together they tell you whether your rate moved, whether your balances moved, and whether the combination left you over- or under-covered. Everything else on the Synovus Gateway statement is detail that explains those three, and once you know where to look in Synovus Gateway the whole page reads in under a minute.
Managing Balances Against Fees
The central decision in account analysis is how much balance to keep on deposit relative to your recurring fees. Hold too little, and your earnings credit falls short and you pay a hard-dollar residual fee. Hold too much, and you generate surplus credit that evaporates unused, meaning idle cash that could have been invested or deployed elsewhere is instead earning a soft rate that benefits no one. Synovus Gateway is where that trade-off becomes visible in dollars.
The break-even is the balance at which your earnings credit exactly equals your service charges. Above it you are over-collateralized against fees; below it you are underfunded. Because both the ECR and your monthly fees move, the break-even is not fixed. Synovus Gateway gives you the historical inputs to estimate it: with a recent ECR and a typical monthly service charge, you can solve for the available balance that neutralizes your fees.
Rearranging the earnings credit formula makes this concrete. The break-even available balance equals your monthly service charges divided by the ECR, adjusted for the fraction of the year the cycle represents. If your fees run steady and your ECR is stable, that target balance is a useful planning anchor. If either input is volatile, you plan to a range rather than a point, and you monitor the actual net position in Synovus Gateway rather than assuming last cycle repeats.
Excess balances have an opportunity cost. Cash parked to earn a soft credit you do not need is cash not earning a hard yield in an interest-bearing account, a sweep, or an investment. The discipline account analysis enforces is to fund your operating accounts to roughly the break-even and to move the surplus somewhere it earns real return. Many treasury teams use the Synovus Gateway analysis history to right-size their operating float and then sweep the remainder, letting Synovus Gateway confirm each cycle that the balance is still working as intended.
There is also the underfunded case, common when fees spike from a one-time volume event or when the ECR drops. Here the statement shows a positive net position, a real fee. Whether it is worth adding balance to cover it depends on the size of the gap and the yield you forgo by tying up cash. Sometimes paying the hard fee is simply cheaper than the balance required to offset it, especially in a low-rate environment. The analysis in Synovus Gateway gives you the numbers to make that call deliberately.
Earnings Credit Versus Hard Interest
A frequent point of confusion is the difference between earnings credit and the interest paid on an interest-bearing deposit. They are related in spirit but different in substance, and the choice between them has real consequences. Synovus Gateway keeps the two clearly separated in its reporting so you never mistake one for the other.
| Attribute | Earnings Credit (ECR) | Hard Interest |
|---|---|---|
| FORM | Soft credit; offsets fees only | Cash paid into the account |
| TAXABLE | Generally not taxable income | Taxable interest income |
| UPSIDE CAP | Capped at total fees | No fee-based cap |
| BEST FOR | Fee-heavy operating accounts | Excess or reserve balances |
| WHERE SHOWN | Account analysis statement | Regular deposit statement |
The rule of thumb is straightforward. Balances that are there to pay for services belong where an earnings credit can absorb the fees, and you fund those accounts to the break-even. Balances above that break-even earn nothing extra as soft credit, so they belong where hard interest or a sweep captures real yield. The account analysis in Synovus Gateway makes that boundary visible by showing exactly how much credit your balances actually consumed, and Synovus Gateway reports the residual as the net position.
Tax treatment reinforces the point. Because earnings credit is a fee offset rather than income, it does not add to taxable interest, which some organizations value. That is context, not tax advice; the analysis reporting in Synovus Gateway simply gives your finance and tax teams the documentation they need to treat each side correctly. The broader mechanics of an earnings credit rate are consistent across the industry, and Synovus Gateway follows those conventions.
A Worked Example
Consider a single operating account for a 30-day cycle. The figures below are illustrative, chosen to show the mechanics rather than to quote any specific rate. Walk through them once and the statement in Synovus Gateway will read like plain language afterward.
| Line | Value |
|---|---|
| Average ledger balance | $2,000,000.00 |
| Less average float | -$50,000.00 |
| Average collected balance | $1,950,000.00 |
| Less reserve at 10% | -$195,000.00 |
| Available balance | $1,755,000.00 |
| ECR (annual) | 2.00% |
| Earnings credit (30 / 365 days) | $2,884.93 |
| Total service charges | $2,400.00 |
| Net position | -$484.93 surplus |
In this example the account produced $2,884.93 in earnings credit against $2,400.00 in fees, a surplus of $484.93. Under a standard soft-dollar arrangement that surplus is unused; the balances earned more credit than there were fees to absorb. Synovus Gateway would show the net position as fully covered, but a treasurer reading it closely would notice the over-coverage and ask whether that last slice of balance is working hard enough. This is precisely the kind of insight Synovus Gateway is meant to make routine.
Solving for the break-even shows the point precisely. At a 2.00 percent ECR over 30 days, the available balance needed to generate exactly $2,400.00 of credit is roughly $1,460,000. Above that, in this scenario, the extra balance produces credit with no fee to offset. That kind of arithmetic, run against real figures pulled from Synovus Gateway, is what turns account analysis from a statement you file into a lever you pull. Export the cycle from Synovus Gateway, run the numbers, and the decision makes itself.
Optimization Practices
Good ECR management is a routine, not a project. The practices below keep the account analysis working in your favor cycle after cycle, and each of them draws on data you already have inside Synovus Gateway.
- 01Review every cycle. Open the analysis statement in Synovus Gateway each month and check the ECR, available balance, and net position before anything else.
- 02Fund to the break-even. Keep operating balances near the level that neutralizes fees and move the surplus to a yield-bearing home; Synovus Gateway shows you how close you are.
- 03Track the ECR trend. Because the rate is managed, watch its direction over several cycles in Synovus Gateway rather than reacting to one month.
- 04Audit the service detail. Confirm the volumes and unit prices in the charge summary match what you actually used; billing errors surface here in Synovus Gateway.
- 05Consolidate where it helps. Where account structures allow, pooling balances can let credit from one account offset fees in another, which the reporting in Synovus Gateway can help you model.
Consolidation deserves a note of its own. Organizations that run many entities or many accounts sometimes find one account swimming in surplus credit while another pays hard fees. Depending on how your relationship is structured, aggregating balances and charges across a group can let the surplus cover the shortfall, so no credit is wasted and no fee is paid unnecessarily. Synovus Gateway supports the reporting needed to see those cross-account imbalances, which is the first step to correcting them.
Finally, treat the account analysis history as a forecasting tool. Several cycles of ECR, balance, and fee data in Synovus Gateway let you project next quarter's net position under different rate and volume assumptions. That forward view is what separates treasury teams that manage their earnings credit from those that merely receive it, and Synovus Gateway is where that view lives.
How to Get Started
If account analysis is new to your team, the following sequence moves you from first login to active management without wasted steps. Each step happens inside Synovus Gateway.
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STEP 01
Locate the account analysis reporting section within Synovus Gateway and confirm which of your accounts are analyzed. Not every deposit account is on an analysis relationship, so start by mapping which ones are in Synovus Gateway.
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STEP 02
Open the most recent statement and identify the ECR, available balance, service charges, and net position. Reconcile the service detail against your own records for one cycle to build confidence in the numbers Synovus Gateway reports.
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STEP 03
Compute your break-even balance from a recent ECR and typical monthly fees. Compare it to the balance you actually hold to see whether you are over- or under-funded, using the figures Synovus Gateway supplies.
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STEP 04
Set a target operating balance, decide where surplus should go, and schedule a standing monthly review of the analysis statement in Synovus Gateway. Involve your treasury contact for any structure or pooling changes.
Ready to review your current earnings credit position inside Synovus Gateway?
Open Account AnalysisFrequently Asked Questions
Is the earnings credit paid to me as cash?
No. Under a standard soft-dollar arrangement the earnings credit only offsets service fees. It reduces or eliminates what you owe, but any credit beyond your fees is not paid out. Synovus Gateway shows this in the net position line.
Why does my ECR change from month to month?
The ECR is a managed rate the bank sets, and it generally tracks short-term market conditions. When those move, the rate applied on your analysis statement in Synovus Gateway moves with them, changing how much credit a given balance produces. Watching that trend in Synovus Gateway helps you plan ahead.
What is the difference between ledger and collected balance?
Ledger balance is your book balance; collected balance is that figure less float, the deposited items not yet cleared. The ECR is applied to the available balance, which is collected balance less the reserve requirement. Synovus Gateway lists each of these separately.
How do I find my break-even balance?
Divide your monthly service charges by the ECR, then adjust for the cycle length as a fraction of the year. The result is the available balance that generates credit equal to your fees. Pull recent figures from Synovus Gateway to run it against your own numbers.
Should excess balances stay in the analyzed account?
Usually not. Balances above the break-even earn only soft credit you cannot use once fees are covered. Moving that surplus to an interest-bearing account or sweep captures hard yield instead. The analysis in Synovus Gateway shows how much surplus you are carrying.
Can credit from one account cover fees on another?
Depending on how your relationship is structured, balances and charges across a group of accounts can be aggregated so surplus credit offsets a shortfall elsewhere. Synovus Gateway reporting helps identify where those imbalances exist so you can discuss pooling with your treasury contact.
Is earnings credit taxable?
Because it is a fee offset rather than paid income, earnings credit is generally not treated as taxable interest, unlike the hard interest on an interest-bearing account. Synovus Gateway documents each side; confirm the treatment with your tax advisor.
Where in Synovus Gateway do I find the analysis statement?
The account analysis report sits within the reporting area of Synovus Gateway, alongside your other treasury statements. From there you can view the current cycle, browse prior periods, and export the detail. If you do not see it, your treasury contact can confirm which accounts are set up for analysis in Synovus Gateway.