ACH Step By Step - Part 2 - Single Payment

This "Step-by-Step" series is intended to provide you with an orderly progression of procedures and procedural considerations.

The actual details and expansive explanations are contained elsewhere in the Help pages and will be referred to by link to follow at the end of each page, where applicable.

This Step-by-Step page is dedicated to all aspects concerning Single ACH Payments.

When you have completed a full review of all the steps, you should be:

Able to post a single ACH payment
Able to save banking information
Able to read the payment details from the transaction
Familiar with running the reconcile

Posting A Single ACH Payment

There are two choices with which to post ACH Payments: single transactions and recurring arrangements. This section is dedicated to all things concerning Single ACH Payments.

To access the menu to reach the debtor banking intake screen, click the ACH button in the lower right corner of the main Debtor screen.

Select the ACH button

It will take you to the ACH Payment Tasks menu.

If this is the first time you are accessing this menu, after signing into Collect!, you may be prompted to enter your ACH UserId and Password.

Billing Tree ACH Password

Once you enter your UserID and Password, they stay in effect until you close your current Collect! session.

If you have entered your Password into the ACH Payments Setup screen, it will be stored and used each time you sign into Collect!. You will not be prompted to enter a Password. Only User Levels 1, 10 and 99 will see the prompt. If there is no change, clicking OK to proceed will advance you to the next screen.

When the ACH Payment Tasks menu is displayed, select the RUN A TRANSACTION button.

Select the RUN A TRANSACTION button

This will open the Single ACH Transaction screen.

Single ACH Transaction

Press F1 on any field in the window to be navigated to the Help document description of the field.

Save Bank Information

The switch to "Save bank information" invokes a writeback of information as you entered it into the Payment intake window and stores it in the Debtor Detail Tab.

You also have the ability to designate whether this information will save to the main Debtor or into a Cosigner window, with the Class designation of ACH Payer. Older versions of Collect! use "Other" as the Class.

Bank Information Saved to Debtor Detail

Bank is the payer's Bank.

Account is the payer's Bank Account Number.

Transit Number is the Bank ABA routing number.

Detail 1 is the Bank Account type.

The module will overwrite any information that is currently stored in the Debtor Detail Bank, Account, ABA and Debtor Detail 1 fields.

Contact Technical Services if you need assistance migrating historical information that you may have stored in these fields BEFORE you go live with your ACH payments. A special Attachments Tab window can be created for you and data migrated so that you retain whatever other information you may have previously been storing in the Debtor Detail Tab.

Alternatively, you can save the banking information to a Cosigner window with the Class designation ACH Payer. Older versions of Collect! use "Other" as the Class.:

Name, Address and Bank Information Saved to Cosigner

User 1 is the payer's Bank.

User 2 is the Bank ABA routing number.

User 3 is the payer's Bank Account Number.

User 4 is the Bank Account type.

Transaction Details

When ACH payments are reconciled, Billing Tree uploads confirmations to your system and stores the confirmation details to the Transaction Details Tab for the line item it matches for the debtor. This information will come as a result of Reconcile ACH History on either a per debtor or company-wide batch process.

Transaction Details

Banking unique tracking and confirmation details are stored on each debtor record as follows:

User 2 is a unique Reference # {filenumber-date-time-fee}.

User 3 is the fee amount.

User 4 is the Bank Account type.

User 5 is the masked Bank Account Number.

User 6 is the Bank's ABA routing number.

User 7 is the Payer, either the Debtor or the Cosigner.

Confirmation # is a unique Transaction ID assigned to this ACH payment during the Billing Tree process.

Reconcile ACH Payments

It is necessary to regularly synchronize your system with Billing Tree's records for ACH payments. This is how you will discover reversed transactions, unmatched payments and payments made directly to the Billing Tree webpage by the debtor.

Specifically, the reconciliation process does the following logical steps:

It surveys your system to see if there are currently any ACH payments due but not yet reported to Billing Tree. If there are any new current-dated transactions that have not yet been submitted, they will be uploaded in the batch.

It downloads any reversals of payments that Billing Tree has received since the last time your office has done a reconciliation and writes a Process Summary Report. See RECONCILE ACH HISTORY, topic Processing Summary.

It downloads any external payments which may have been made by debtors directly on the Billing Tree Gateway, using their Collect! file number as their account number.

ACH Step by Step - Part 4 - Reconcile walks you through running an ACH reconcile and processing the returns.

If collectors are experiencing difficulty with debtors not wanting to disclose their banking information to strangers over the phone, this objection can be countered by offering the debtor the opportunity to pay by themselves at the ACH Gateway. They must use their Collect! file number as their unique account number identifier. Your office will receive the payment when you next run your batch Reconcile ACH History process.

To access the batch process to Reconcile your ACH Payments for the day is located via the menu path " Daily Administration\ Payments and Charges\Reconcile ACH History".

Reconcile ACH History

Select the RECONCILE ACH HISTORY button to run your process.

The system maintains records of when it did its last reconcile, and thus runs its process automatically without any end-user input required.

Reconcile ACH History Results

If Billing Tree returns unmatched transactions, Collect! stores the information in a file in the "CV11\bin\BillingTree\ACH" folder.

It also writes a detailed log into the path "CV11\bin\BillingTree\ACH\achnow.txt".

This topic covered single ACH payments. If you want to schedule recurring payments, refer to Help topic, ACH Step by Step - Part 3 - Recurring Payment Schedule.

Users of CV11.6.2.7 and higher who are also licensed for the Scheduler Module now have an enhanced automation with the addition of the Reconcile process being added to the Scheduler Task list of options. You may run this process offline and unattended. Contact us at sales@collect.org for module pricing.