Collect! Credit and Collection Software™

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How To Take Billing Tree Credit Card Payments

This page is the guide for processing Credit Card payments in Collect! via the integrated Billing Tree module.

Billing Tree Credit Card Setup

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

1. 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.

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Single Credit Card Transaction

There are two choices with which to post Credit Card Payments: single transactions and recurring arrangements.

Click the Credit Card button in the lower right corner of the Debtor screen to access the Credit Card Payment Tasks window.


Select the Credit Card button

Useful Note If this is the first time you are accessing this screen, after signing into Collect!, you will be prompted to enter your Credit Card Source Key and PIN.


Billing Tree Credit Card PIN

Once you enter your Source Key and PIN, they stay in effect until you sign out of Collect!.

Useful Note If you have entered a system-wide Password into the Credit Card Setup screen, you will not be prompted to enter a Password unless you are in any of User Levels 1, 10 or 99.


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.

Special points of note on this intake screen are:

a) A valid billing address for the card holder is required.

b) A valid 2-character state code is required.

c) A valid zip code is required. The transaction will be rejected if an attempt to put in a placeholder, non-valid zip is attempted in the absence of one which is known.

d) If you enabled convenience fees for this debtor's client, the check box will be accessible and require your endorsement to charge the convenience fee by checking the "Apply fee" box first, before you see the fee amount populate.

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Save Credit Card Info

The "Save credit card info" switch is ON and grayed out. You can select either "To Debtor" or "To Cosigner" but Collect! has to store the credit card information when you are using Billing Tree for recurring payments.

The switch to "Save credit card info" enables you to update your debtor screen with any new address or name information. To update this information, click the radio button labeled "To debtor" and a dot will appear beside the field.

This will also save the credit card information to the Debtor Detail tab on the main debtor screen.


Credit Card Info Saved to Debtor Detail

Detail 2 is the masked Credit Card Number.

Detail 3 is the Credit Card type.

Detail 4 is Billing Tree's unique Client Number for the stored debtor. *** IMPORTANT: Don't change this number! If you plan to use Billing Tree, this field must be left blank. The module will manage this field itself.

Useful Note Be aware that this does overwrite any information that is currently stored in the Debtor Detail 2, Debtor Detail 3, and Debtor Detail 4 fields. Alternatively, you can save the information to the Cosigner and Collect! will create a new Cosigner record.

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Save Credit Card Info To Cosigner

You can save all the Name, Address and Credit Card information to a new Cosigner window, if the payer is not the Debtor. Collect! will set the Cosigner class to CC Payer.


Name, Address and Credit Card Info Saved to Cosigner

User 3 is the masked Credit Card Number.

User 4 is the Credit Card type.

Useful Note At any given time, Collect! only stores one CC Payer Cosigner and one Recurring Credit Card Payments Schedule per file.

When if you save the credit card information to the Cosigner, the Client # is still stored in the Debtor Detail 4 field because the stored record is always the Debtor.


Client Number in Debtor Detail

Detail 4 is Billing Tree's unique Client Number for the stored debtor. *** IMPORTANT: Don't change this number!

Useful Note Leave this switch ON for the duration of your payment schedule so that Collect! can verify the credit card information for the payer in the CC Payer Cosigner window during electronic reconciliations with Billing Tree.

Useful Note If you wish to charge a convenience fee, you must have enabled Credit Card convenience fees in your Credit Card Setup screen and also for the individual Clients in the Advanced Settings screen.


Client Settings screen

If enabled, you will be able to check the Apply Fee box and the designated fee amount will auto-populate.

The Apply Fee check-box and Fee amount field both remain appear grayed out if the convenience fee is not enabled.

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

Useful Note 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

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Transaction Details

Processing confirmation details are stored in the Transaction Detail tab when your Credit Card payments are finalized.


Transaction Details

User 1 is the Authorization Code.

User 2 stores the Payer's name if the Payer is not the Debtor.

User 3 is the masked Credit Card Number.

User 4 stores the source of the transaction. There are 3 options:
- single = Single Transaction run from Collect! by an Operator

- recurring = Recurring Transaction that was posted during the CC Reconciliation.

- vterm = Web Portal Transaction that was posted during the CC Reconciliation.


User 6 displays "Processed" for successful submits.

User 7 is the unique Transaction Reference Number assigned to this credit card payment.

Warning Note WARNING: To prevent duplicate postings and charges to the debtor, the user fields are all set to Read Only regardless of your user level.

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Recurring Credit Card Payments

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


Select the Credit Card button

Useful Note If this is the first time you are accessing this screen, after signing into Collect!, you will be prompted to enter your Credit Card Source Key and PIN.


Billing Tree Credit Card PIN

Once you enter your Source Key and PIN, they stay in effect until you sign out of Collect!.

Useful Note If you have entered your Password into the Credit Card Setup window, you will not be prompted to enter a Password. Only User Levels 1, 10 and 99 will see the Password prompt.


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.

Useful Note 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 and currently does not support convenience fees on recurring payments.

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.

Useful Note Collect! will automatically adjust the final payment ONLY IF the owing amount is lower than the final payment. For example: the final payment will adjust down if the payment amount is $10.00 and the owing is $9.99 or lower. The payment amount will NOT adjust up of the payment amount is $10.00 and the owing is $10.01 or higher. Collect! will also set the remaining payment to 1.


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

Useful Note Recurring credit card payments are not posted in Collect! until you run batch "Reconcile Credit Card History" the day on or 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

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Change Payment Information

On the Debtor, click the CREDIT CARD button.

Click the RECURRING PAYMENTS button to open this entry window.

Click the DELETE RECURRING SCHEDULE to cancel the contract with Billing Tree.

Setup a new payment arrangement as per How to schedule recurring payments.


Recurring Credit Card Payments

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EFT Notices

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

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

Useful Note 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.

View EFT Notices samples.

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Run A Contact Plan

If you set a contact plan in the 'Run plan on recurring' field on the ACH Payments Setup form, it will run when the recurring payments is posted.

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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.

Warning Note WARNING: If the last reconcile date is more than 7 days into the past, Collect! will prompt you during the reconciliation process to confirm that you want to proceed. If you run the task via the Task Scheduler, Collect! will not run the reconciliation and will put an entry in the Application Log that the task failed.


Reconcile Credit Card History


Credit Card Transactions Posted

Useful Note 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 Note 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 logs folder; Collect\Log Files\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

If a file number match is made during reconciliation but the transaction is skipped or errored out for any reason, you will see a Note line logged to the specific debtor account that the transaction belongs to, identifying what was skipped or errored. The note line 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 "Collect\Log Files\BillingTree\CreditCard\usaepay.txt".

Useful Note Users who are also licensed for the Scheduler Module have an enhanced automation with the Reconcile process being available in the Scheduler Task list of options. You may run this process unattended. Contact us at sales@collect.org for module pricing.

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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

Warning Note 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.

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.

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Viewing Results

Collect! launches several steps when you reconcile.

Credit card payments that have been processed by Billing Tree since your last reconcile are posted in Collect!. Key details are stored in the Transaction Detail tab.


Transaction Details

If Billing Tree is unable to process a payment due to a stored credit card being declined, Collect! posts a zero value transaction. "Omit from client statement" is switched ON. Several details are written to the Transaction Detail tab.


Credit Card Declined

User 6 displays "Declined" for rejected credit card transactions.


Credit Card Setup

If a credit card is reported as "Declined" when you reconcile credit card history, Collect! can automatically stop the recurring payment schedule. If you switched ON "Declined recurring cancels plan" in the Credit Card Setup, Collect! uploads notification to Billing Tree to cancel the payment schedule. Collect! will remove the EFT notices.

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 Collect\Log Files\BillingTree\CreditCard folder.

For example: Collect\Log Files\BillingTree\CreditCard\Unmatched_180519-130554.csv, where 180519 represents May 15th, 2015 and 130554 represents a time stamp in the format HH:MM:SS.

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Viewing Application Log Entries

You may also find additional information in the Collect! Application Log when you run your reconcile and errors are encountered PROVIDED you had checked the box for 'Enable Verbose Logging' in your initial Credit Card Setup screen.

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

If a file number match is made during reconciliation but the transaction is skipped or errored out for any reason, you will see a Note line logged to the specific debtor account that the transaction belongs to identifying what was skipped or errored. The note line 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).

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