Billing Tree Credit Card Payments - Quick Tour

This page will provide an overview of:

How to setup CC Payments

How to make a single payment with a Credit Card

How to setup a recurring payment with a Credit Card

Setting up Your Electronic File Transfer(EFT) Notices

How to run a reconcile your Credit Card History

How to reconcile a single Debtor

For a detailed instructions of all the steps shown here, refer to the Help topic, " Billing Tree Credit Card Payments - Step by Step".

Billing Tree Credit Card Setup

To be able to use Credit Card payments, there are two preliminary steps to be completed:

You require licensing from Comtech Systems Inc. to license the Billing Tree Module on your site. For pricing information and licensing, please contact us at 250-391-0466 or email sales@collect.org.

2. You require an active account with Billing Tree. They will provide you with a url/web address and pin number to access the Credit Card Gateway. Contact information for Billing Tree can be found at their website www.mybillingtree.com.

Once you have the Collect! interface and an active account with Billing Tree, you can enter the necessary information into the Credit Card Setup screen and begin using the system-to-system interface.

Credit Card Setup

Single Credit Card Transaction

To enter a single credit card transaction, click the Credit Card button in the lower right corner of the main debtor screen.

Select the Credit Card button

If you have not yet set up your Credit Card global login credentials, your individual user will be prompted popup window entitled " Billing Tree Credit Card Pin" and they will have to enter the password they are to use.

Billing Tree Credit Card PIN

Individual logins are good for a single Collect! session and the PIN will need to be re-entered on the next occasion this user opens a Collect! session.

Alternatively, a global login can be created in the Credit Card Setup window and will be used as default for all user levels. If any of user levels 1, 10 or 99 required access to another viable login profile to the Credit Card Gateway, they would be prompted with a popup screen to enter the different credentials and thus access with the different login if necessary. Otherwise, clicking OK to proceed to the next screen is all that is needed when the global login popup is presented to the highest ranking of user levels.

The CREDIT CARD TASKS menu pops up after selecting the 'Credit Card' button on the Debtor screen.

Credit Card Payment Tasks

Click RUN A TRANSACTION to open the Single Credit Card Transaction screen.

Single Credit Card Transaction

Some of the fields will be auto-filled for you as the window opens. Credit card information that you enter will be stored in the Debtor Detail tab.

Be aware that this does overwrite any information that is currently stored in the Detail 2 and Detail 3 fields.

If you are permitted by regional law and your client to charge a convenience fee, you can have the module include a fee automatically each time you submit a credit card transaction. In addition to the Credit Card Setup preferences, you also need to check the Credit Card Convenience Fee box in the Advanced Client Settings window. Contact Technical Services if you have a volume of clients to check this switch on and need a writeback report to do these en masse from a tagged list of clients.

Client Settings screen

You can fill in other details as needed, save the credit card and address information to the Debtor or Cosigner and submit the payment.

Ready to Submit Single Credit Card Transaction

Collect! sends the credit card information to Billing Tree immediately. If the credit card is accepted, Billing Tree stores the payment for processing by USA ePay at day's end.

Credit Card Transaction Approved by Billing Tree

Approved single credit card payments are posted in Collect! immediately, including convenience fee transactions, if applicable, but they are NOT sent to USA ePay by Billing Tree until day's end. It is possible that a credit card transaction will subsequently come back declined or disapproved in future days' time.

Credit Card Transactions Posted

Recurring Credit Card Payments

Click the 'Credit Card' button in the lower right of the the Debtor Screen.

Select the Credit Card button

If this is the first time you are accessing this screen, after signing into Collect!, you will be prompted to enter your Credit Card login credentials.

Billing Tree Credit Card PIN

Once you enter your Source Key and PIN, they stay in effect until you sign out of Collect! unless your site has entered a global login. Only user levels 1, 10 & 99 see the login prompt thereafter and simply click OK to accept the defaults to proceed to the next screen.

You will then be presented with the Credit Card Payment Tasks menu popup.

Credit Card Payment Tasks

Click the RECURRING PAYMENTS button to open this entry window.

Recurring Credit Card Payments

Some of the fields will be auto-filled for you as soon as you open the window.

Credit Card Guidelines prohibit the charging of convenience fees on all but the first entry in any recurring schedule arrangement. Our module is compliant with these regulations and will not auto- post fees on any but the first transaction in a recurring arrangement.

You can fill in other details as needed on the entry screen, save the credit card and address information to the Debtor or Cosigner and Submit the payment schedule to the Billing Tree Gateway.

Ready to Submit Recurring Credit Card Payments Schedule

If the card is accepted, Billing Tree stores the card details for the recurring credit card payments. This is a requirement for PCI compliance. There will be a redacted version of the card number retained only, with no expiry date or cvv numbers being retained in system for PCI Compliance.

Credit Card Schedule Stored at Billing Tree

Recurring credit card payments are not posted in Collect! until you run batch "Reconcile Credit Card History" the day after the payment comes due.

The module then creates a Promise contact to assist the collector with keeping the track of the payment schedule.

Promise Contact for Recurring Credit Card Payments

The module also inputs a post-dated Review Contact to make sure the collector is reminded of the end of the payment schedule as well.

Review Contact for Recurring Credit Card Payments

The module includes an EFT Notice Setup which allows you to be able to schedule all pre-payment reminder and/or authorization letters which you may be legislatively required to send to your debtors making Electronic Funds Transfer payments by reliably sending them out "X" days ahead of the payment due dates.

EFT Notices and Reviews

EFT Notices

In compliance with EFT requirements, the module has the ability to automatically schedule authorization letters and EFT notices for recurring credit card and ACH payments.

You can access this setup window from the menu path "System\Preferences\ Billing Tree Setup\ EFT Notices Setup". It allows you to be able to select which letter you wish to send from the letter library you have stored in your Print Menu and set a predefined number of days ahead of any due date that the letter should be sent.

EFT Notices Setup

It is your responsibility to ensure that any letters you send to debtors are compliant in format and content with legislation and regulations in your region.

When you post a recurring credit card payments schedule, the module will automatically schedule letters and reviews according to your EFT Notices setup.

EFT Notices and Reviews

View EFT Notices

Reconcile Credit Card History

The Reconcile Credit Card History is a batch process that queries Billing Tree for all credit card payments processed by them but have not been posted in Collect! yet. This will include any payments which any Debtors have made directly on the Billing Tree website, provided they have used their Collect! file number as their unique identifier on the Gateway website along with any recurring payments which came due since your last Reconcile. You will also receive any new declines / chargeback (reversals) when you run the Reconcile process.

Reconcile Credit Card History

Credit Card Transactions Posted

Debtors may enter their own payments directly at the Billing Tree Gateway provided they are advised to use their Collect! file number as their unique identifier/account number.

To download the latest batch of credit card transactions not yet posted in Collect!, follow the menu path " Daily Administration\ Payments and Charges\Reconcile Credit Card History". Selecting this process will query Billing Tree for all approved transactions, declines and/or reversals which have taken place since your last reconciliation.

WARNING: If you use different Billing Tree login IDs for staff with different permissions, i.e. for max amount allowed to submit, then it is necessary to run separate reconciliations for EACH separate Billing Tree login.

Once the process is invoked, as information is exchanged between Collect! and Billing Tree. You will see a summary screen with batch download results. If payments cannot be matched, for reasons such as invalid file number or some kind of modification to a pre-existing transaction which now no longer matches Billing Tree's records, then these items will be written out to an exception report stored in your bin folder; CV11\bin\BillingTree\CreditCard. The file naming convention is "Unmatched", followed by the date in YYMMDD format, and lastly the time stamp HHMMSS. Transactions in this report require manual review and posting in Collect!.

Reconcile Credit Card History Results

If a credit card is declined when an attempt is made by Billing Tree to process a recurring payment, then Collect! processes the payment as "Declined" and uses your settings from the Credit Card Setup options.

Credit Card Setup

As of version CV11.6.2.9, if a file number match is made during reconciliation but the transaction is skipped or errored out for any reason, you will now see a Noteline logged to the specific debtor account that the transaction belongs to, identifying what was skipped or errored. The noteline will be prefixed "Failed Transaction:" and indicate that an "Error" occurred, as well as provide the Payment Date and amount. This is a transaction that would need to be manually reviewed for what caused the issue and corrective action would depend on what was ascertained as root cause (i.e. was the transaction manually modified between upload of transaction and download of process confirmation).

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

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.

Reconcile Debtor

The Reconcile Debtor function enables you to query Billing Tree for any credit card payments that may have been processed by Billing Tree for a particular Debtor but not yet posted in Collect!.

Reconcile Debtor

When you run the Reconcile Debtor function, Collect! displays a summary screen to let you know what, if any, action was taken. If transactions are found for this debtor that are not in Collect! then the payments will be posted as soon as the Reconcile Debtor function runs.

Reconcile Debtor Results

Processing transaction confirmation will appear in the Transaction record, where the Confirmation # is stored in the lower right of the screen and additional information specific to the transaction is retained in the Transaction Detail Tab.