Modern Payments ACH

You can use Collect! to manage your Modern Payments accounts.

This procedure requires:

1. A Modern Payments account with Modern Payments and a Client ID assigned by them.
2. A Modern Payments ACH report in Collect!
3. A modern.html file located in your Collect! \styles folder.

If you do not have a Modern Payments ACH report or the modern.html, please contact Collect! Technical Services at support@collectsoftware.cc. If you do not have a Modern Payments account, please contact Modern Payments.

Setting Up Modern Payments

There are three areas to set up in Collect! when you want to use Modern Payments.

• Edit the Report Options for the Modern Payments ACH report.
• Edit the Client ID in the Modern Payments ACH report.
• Enter appropriate banking information in Debtor Detail for each account that you wish to manage.

Report Options Settings

First, we need to edit the Report Options for the Modern Payments ACH report.

1. To access the Modern Payments ACH report, select Print from the top menu bar in Collect! and then select Edit Reports from the list of drop-down choices. This will display the list of all reports in your system. Locate the Modern Payments ACH report in the list and open the Report Definition form to edit the report.

2. Select the Options buttons in the lower lefthand corner of the Report Definition form to open the Report Options form. Select the down arrow next to the field labeled Destination and select OTHER from the list of choices.

3. In the field labeled Filename enter a location on your computer that can be found easily when you are ready to upload your file to Modern Payments. Give your file a name with a *.txt extension. This will produce a tab-delimited file. For example, C:\modernpayments.txt)

4. A field labeled Redirect to will appear. This must be set to the location of the modern.html, i.e. ..\styles\modern.html.

5. Select the OK button to close the Report Options form when you are finished with the settings. You will be returned to the Report Definition form for the Modern Payments ACH report.

Client ID From Modern Payments

Next, the Client ID must be set in the report. This Client ID is the ID assigned to you by Modern Payments when you created your account with them.

While you are still on the Report Definition form for the Modern Payments ACH report, select the Report Body portion of the report to open the Report Body for editing.

At the top of the report, you will see this line:

@tvarClientID* = E90AC8E0

Replace "E90AC8E0" with the Client ID assigned to you by Modern Payments.

Banking Information In Debtor Detail

Finally, your accounts in Collect! must be set up with specific banking information in Debtor Detail. The Debtor Detail form is accessed by selecting the button labeled Detail on the Debtor form. These settings depend on the method of payment - Credit Card or Check (Savings or Checking account).

Examine the file format explanation below for more information about entering the banking details.

File Format Output

The table below indicates the fields that are included in the report output. Following the table are descriptions of fields to help you in properly formatting the file.

*Expiration Year must be entered as {month}/{two-digit year}, for example, 01/04.

1. Client ID

This is an 8-Character number which is initially assigned to you by Modern Payments. It may be modified using the Modern Payments web site by selecting the 'Edit Settings' link in the side-navigation bar after signing-in. The very first item in the 'Edit Settings' page is the 'Client ID.' This is a code which is used to look your company up in the system when you send payments. This ID is manually edited in the Modern Payments ACH report in Collect!

2. Debtor Account Number

This is your reference number for this payment. It may be anything which helps you identify the payment or the client making the payment.

3. Company Name

This comes from your Company Details form.

Fields 4 through 10 come from your Debtor form.

4. First Name 5. LastName 6. Address 7. City 8. State 9. Zip Code 10. Phone

11. Amount

This is the total amount to debit the client's account or charge to their credit card. This comes from the transaction To Us field.

12. Routing Number

The Routing/ABA Number is always exactly 9 digits. It is a unique identifier of the bank where your client's account will be debited. Modern Payments pre-processes payments by looking up routing numbers in a database of all legitimate participating ACH institutions. If a routing number is not found in the database, the payment will go no further. A payment alert will appear in your Modern Payments account alerting you to the error. Once the faulty routing number has been modified, the payment can be resent. This comes from the Transit Number in the Debtor Detail form.

13. Bank Account Number

This is the account to debit the funds from if this is a bank payment. This comes from the Account Number in the Debtor Detail form.

14. Account Type

This is the type of account, 'checking', 'savings', or 'credit card.' Upper or lower case characters, or a combination of both is not important. This comes from the Detail 1 in the Debtor Detail form.

15. Signature

A signature in this situation is anything which can be used as proof that permission from the debtor was obtained to electronically debit their account or charge their credit card. A check number may be used, a mother's maiden name, month of birth. Modern Payments does not require you to use this in any particular way, but if a client disputes a payment, we can resolve the dispute if we have good information about the payment. This information can also be used as proof that you are not committing fraud. This comes from the User 1 on the Transaction.

16. Credit Card Number

If this is a credit card payment as specified in the 'Account' field, the credit card number must be included here. As with routing numbers, the Modpay system will validate credit card numbers before attempting to process them. This comes from the Detail 3 in the Debtor Detail form.

17.Expiration Month

The number of the month in which the credit card expires. (1-12) This comes from first two digits from the Detail 4 in the Debtor Detail form.

18.Expiration Year

The year the credit card expires. The expiration month and year are required and the expiration date must not have passed. The Modpay system will filter out expired credit cards. This comes from last two digits from the Detail 4 in the Debtor Detail form.

19.Name on Card

This is name which appears on the credit card. This comes from the Detail 2 in the Debtor Detail form.

20.Comment

Comments may be included for any reason. The Modpay system does not care about comments, and they are simply stored for your own use. This comes from the Summary field on the Debtor.

In the twenty fields which make up the payment batch file, it is strongly suggested that you include as much information as possible to help you identify the payment at a later date, and to indemnify yourself or your company should any problems occur.

Processing Accounts For Modern Payments

This report may be run from Anywhere in Collect!

When the report is run, it looks through all Transaction Type 107s with a Posted Date of today or earlier and checks to see whether they have already been processed. When a transaction has been found and added to the file, the word 'Processed' gets written into the User 6 field of the transaction.

After all the transactions have been saved to the file, the report gets redirected to the modern.html page which in turn redirects the operator to the Modern Payments sign on page. The operator must sign in and upload the saved file.

Files containing batches of payments to be process can be uploaded to the Modern Payments web site by any client by using the 'Upload File' link provided in the main navigation menu after signing in. Payment Batch files are processed automatically by the Modpay system each business day.

Technical Notes

The Modern Payments ACH report outputs a payment batch file with the name that you entered in the Report Options Filename field. The report is a tab-delimited text file.

Fields are automatically delimited by the tab character when the report is printed. Quotation marks are not needed.

Each line in a Payment Batch file defines one payment to be made. The end-of-line character marks the end of each record in the file.

Windows systems use a combination of Carriage-Return and Line-Feed characters to terminate lines in text files, while Unix/Linux uses only the Line-Feed character. The Modern Payment system accepts both.

Blank lines (lines containing no data or nothing other than whitespace) will be ignored. Also, any line that starts with the # character in the first position on that line will be considered a comment and will be ignored.

Conclusion

This document has explained the setup required for using the Collect!'s Modern Payments ACH report to manage your Modern Payments accounts. When you have an account with Modern Payments and have set up the details in Collect! as described above, you can systematically process your Modern Payments accounts and conveniently upload batch files to the Modern Payments web site.