The Unit21 AML engine revolves around events; events are things that happen on your platform such as a user logging in or exchanging money.

Your company sends Unit21 significant actions that occur with an entity or instrument on your system such as:

Hailey Page sent Laura Smith $3000
Mastercard 5425233430109903 w/ exp date 04/2023 spent $499

There are two types of events, transaction events and action events:

Transaction events are any monetary flow that is sent or received by an entity on your system.

Example: userA-abcdefg sends $12,333.89 usd and userB-2ace3fbb receives + €38,923.33 eur

Action events are non-monetary changes of state that occur on your system, e.g. user logins.

Example: userA-abcdefg logs in to your company website with IP 134.50.876.345

Create a Dummy Event:

Typically, the engineer from your company will automatically create transactions for you, but let's go ahead and create one ourselves for Mr Baker.

Make sure you are logged into your Dashboard.
Go to the Data Explorer and head over to the Transactions Tab
Take a minute to look at the existing Events in the Transactions tab:

A Unit21 customer may have thousands of transactions per day or per minute. For now, let's generate a quick transaction for Mr Baker.

Go to the Upload File tab:

Download this JSON file on your computer:

[{
    "general_data": {
        "event_id": "baker-transaction-01",
        "event_time": 1646766909,
        "event_type": "transaction"
    },
    "transaction_data": {
        "amount": 699,
        "sent_amount": 699,
        "sent_currency": "USD",
        "sender_entity_id": "Baker01",
        "sender_entity_type": "user",
        "received_amount": 699,
        "received_currency": "USD",
        "receiver_entity_id": "Lee01",
        "receiver_entity_type": "user"

    }
}]

This JSON file will create a transaction event for Mr Baker called "baker-transaction-01" where $699 USD was transacted.

The sender_entity_id is the reference to Larry Baker in this transaction.

Replace the event_time with the current Unix timestamp (today's date and time) by going to this URL: https://www.epoch101.com/.

Copy paste the constantly changing number and replace it under event_time:

[{
    "general_data": {
        "event_id": "baker-transaction-01",
        "event_time": EPOCH GOES HERE,
        "event_type": "transaction"
    },
    "transaction_data": {
        "amount": 699,
        "sent_amount": 699,
        "sent_currency": "USD",
        "sender_entity_id": "Baker01",
        "sender_entity_type": "user",
        "received_amount": 699,
        "received_currency": "USD",
        "receiver_entity_id": "Lee01",
        "receiver_entity_type": "user"

    }
}]

📘
What is the Unix Timestamp or Epoch?
The unix time stamp is a way to track time as a running total of seconds. This count starts at the Unix Epoch on January 1st, 1970 at UTC.

Drag and drop Create_event_baker01.json to the Upload File widget.
Make sure the file uploaded correctly, it should be labeled as Awaiting Trigger:

In the table of Recent Uploads, select the menu item (three dots on the right hand side) of your Create_event_baker01.json file.
Select Process in the menu:

Patiently wait while Unit21 validates and processes the file.

You can refresh the page until you see Process Success under the status of the file:

Success! Now let's see the results by navigating to the Transactions tab:

📘
You may need to use our filter system to find the new transaction!

Select the transaction in the table (you may need to use the filters to find the transaction):

This opens up a pane on the right side of the window with additional information about the transaction.

A transaction can have a lot of information attached such as the received id, sender id, instruments used, location information, tags, custom data, and much more. A transaction always has two sides:

SENDER	RECEIVER
Sender Amount: - $699.00 USD	Receiver Amount:+ $699.00 USD
Sender Name: Larry Baker	Receiver Name: None, this entity is not already in the system (a placeholder has been created)
Sender Entity Unit21 ID: 719170349	Receiver Entity Unit21 ID: 726433566
Sender Entity ID: Baker01	Receiver Entity ID: Lee01
Sender Entity Source: INTERNAL	Receiver Entity Source: INTERNAL

The entity_source is either internal or external:

Internal senders exist on your platform (and on Unit21's system)
External senders are external to your ecosystem and do not exist on your platform.

Internal senders will be matched with entities on Unit21's system while external senders will not.

Next, we will create a transaction between instruments and not just entities.