ACH Step By Step - Part 4 - Reconcile

This topic is part of a step by step series to walk you through setting up and using Billing Tree Service for posting ACH payments in Collect!.

When you have proceeded with the steps below, you should:

• Be able to reconcile ACH history
• View results
• Locate Application Log entries
• Locate returns files

We will cover:

• Running Reconcile ACH History
• Viewing Results
• Viewing Application Log Entries
• Processing ACH Return File

Running Reconcile ACH History

The Reconcile ACH History function posts your recurring ACH transactions to Billing Tree for processing. This is the final step in the ACH Payment process fro recurring ACH payments. Payments are posted in Collect! when you create your recurring ACH payments schedule, but they are not sent to Billing Tree until you run your reconcile. So you must run Reconcile ACH History each day to process whatever recurring ACH payments you have have posted in Collect! that have come due since your last reconcile.

Reconcile ACH History

Reconcile ACH History does several things:

• Recurring payments are submitted to Billing Tree.
• Convenience fees are posted in Collect! for any payments processed.
• NSF payments are processed with a reversal.
• New payments posted at Billing Tree web site are entered in Collect!.
• Unmatched payment information is stored in a file in your CV11\bin\BillingTree\ACH folder.
• A processing summary is stored in a file in your CV11\bin\BillingTree\ACH folder.

1. Select the DAILY ADMINISTRATION button from the Main Menu. This will display the Daily Administration menu.

2. Select the PAYMENTS AND CHARGES button. This will display the Payments and Charges menu.

Reconcile ACH History

3. Select the RECONCILE ACH HISTORY button to run your reconcile.

When you run the Reconcile ACH History function, you are sending new payments to Billing Tree and receiving information back for payments previously posted. If a payment goes NSF, for instance, or if a payment was posted at the Billing Tree site by one of your debtors. Collect! displays a summary screen to let you know what actions were taken. If payments cannot be matched, Collect! also saves all pertinent information to a file that you can use for processing payments that do not match your account information in Collect!.

Reconcile ACH History Results

Viewing Results

Collect! does many things when you reconcile.

1. ACH payments that have come due since your last reconcile are submitted to Billing Tree.

When you first create a recurring ACH payment schedule, Collect! creates a transaction for each payment.

ACH Payment Transactions

The Transaction Detail for these transactions looks like this:

Recurring ACH Payment

2. When you run Reconcile ACH History, Collect! fills in the User 2 field of the Transaction Detail with a unique Reference #.

Reference # in User 2

3. Collect! fills in the Confirmation # field of the Transaction Detail with Billing Tree's unique Transaction ID.

Transaction ID in Confirmation #

4. If the ACH payment schedule includes a convenience fee, Collect! posts the fee when a recurring payment is processed successfully.

Convenience Fee Transaction

5. If any previous payments come back as NSF, Collect! reverses the payment in Collect! and any convenience fee charged. NSF fees are posted according to your settings in the ACH Payments Setup form.

ACH Payments Setup

If a recurring ACH payment is returned as NSF when you run Reconcile ACH History, Collect! can automatically stop the recurring payment schedule. If you switched ON "NSF cancels recurring payments" in the ACH Payments Setup form, Collect! deletes all details of the recurring ACH payment schedule from Collect!, including EFT notices.

6. If any payments have been posted at the Billing Tree rather than through Collect!, they are also processed when you reconcile. If they cannot be matched to debtors in your database, a file is stored with all relevant information so that you can process the payments as required. It is stored in the CV11\bin\BillingTree\ACH folder.

For example:
CV11\bin\BillingTree\ACH\UnmatchedReturns-091218-163821.csv

7. A processing summary PDF is stored for each reconcile that you run. It is also stored in the CV11\bin\BillingTree\ACH folder.

For example:
CV11\bin\BillingTree\ACH\ProcessingSummary-091218-164459.pdf

Viewing Application Log Entries

If the Reconcile ACH History results reported any errors, these can be examined in the Collect! Application Log.

Application Log Entry for Billing Tree ACH Error

Switch ON " Misc" and "Error" in the Collect! Log Viewer settings to quickly filter the Application Log for Billing Tree Service entries.

Processing ACH Return File

If Billing Tree returns unmatched transactions, Collect! stores the information in a CSV file in the CV11\bin\BillingTree\ACH folder. The file is uniquely named with a date/time stamp.

For example:
CV11\bin\BillingTree\ACH\UnmatchedReturns-091218-164428.csv

If unmatched returns do belong to debtors in your system, you can use an import map to bring them in after you have corrected the situation that prevented Collect! from matching them during the reconcile.

Summary

This topic stepped through running Reconcile ACH History. This is the final step in the ACH Payment process for recurring ACH payments. Payments are posted in Collect! when you create your recurring ACH payments schedule, but they are not sent to Billing Tree until you run your reconcile. So you must run Reconcile ACH History each day to process whatever recurring ACH payments you have posted in Collect! that have come due since your last reconcile.

See Also

- Billing Tree Service Topics