Eight questions to practise aloud
Try each question before opening the suggested answer. The examples suit business analyst, QA and application support interviews.
1. Walk me through a gas trade from booking to settlement.
Start with trade capture and validation. Explain who confirms the deal, how risk sees the position, how operations handles scheduling and actuals, and how settlements matches the invoice and reconciles payment.
2. The confirmation quantity differs from the booking. What do you do?
Compare the original deal evidence, booked quantity and counterparty confirmation. Check units and delivery period. Raise the discrepancy, route it to the responsible owner and keep an audit trail of the resolution.
3. How can a new purchase affect position and P&L?
Identify the book, commodity and delivery period first. A 1,000 MWh buy increases the signed position by 1,000 MWh before offsets. Explain how valuation changes when the comparable market price moves and state your assumptions.
4. How would you investigate a settlement discrepancy?
Recalculate from the applicable quantity and price. Compare invoice lines against trade terms, actuals, price fixings and approved adjustments. Check currency, units, rounding and whether an amendment reached settlements.
5. How would you test a trade amendment?
Test a valid amendment, an unauthorised one and an amendment after confirmation or settlement. Verify the audit trail and the downstream effect on position, confirmation and invoice records.
6. A trade is missing from a downstream report. Where do you look?
Confirm the trade exists and qualifies for the report. Check status, book, date and filters. Follow the source event through the interface, inspect failures or duplicates and reconcile against the downstream record.
7. What is the difference between trade date and delivery date?
The trade date records when the parties agreed the deal. The delivery date or period describes when the commodity is due to flow. Pricing and payment can follow their own dates under the contract.
8. How would you turn a settlement complaint into a test case?
Gather the contract terms, source records and expected invoice. Write a repeatable example with input data, steps and expected outcomes. Include the case that triggered the complaint and one boundary case, such as a partial delivery.
How to make the answer specific
Use one example throughout. Name the data you would check, who owns the next action and how you would prove the issue was resolved. Finish with the control or test that would catch it next time.
Practise in the simulator
Explore ETRMPractice’s synthetic workflows and apply the same checks to your practice workspace.