Understanding Federal Payment Processing

U.S. Federal agencies use payment schedules (also called Treasury schedules) to group vouchers in batches that the system pays all at once. You establish rules to make those batches of payments on time, based on invoice, receipt of goods and services, and acceptance dates.

Payment scheduling by due date helps U.S. Federal agencies fulfill their Prompt Payment Act obligation to bundle payments with shared characteristics when sending them for processing by the Department of the Treasury.

In PeopleSoft Payables, the Pay Cycle Application Engine process (AP_APY2015) selects payments during a pay cycle run and assigns them to the appropriate payment schedule. The Pay Cycle process then produces a transaction file of the payment schedule for you to deliver to the Department of the Treasury. A voucher is known as a warehoused payment until it is selected for a schedule, generated as a transaction file, and transmitted to a Treasury Disbursing Office (TDO).

The Pay Cycle process groups payments for submission to the TDO when they share the following characteristics:

You can also set up payment schedule processing so that it generates a new schedule after the current schedule reaches a defined number of payments and appropriations. You perform this setup for each payment method and EFT layout combination used for payment schedules, using the Payment Schedule Restrictions page.

To process federal payment schedules:

1. Enter payment schedule vouchers just as you would any other voucher, using either the Voucher component (VCHR_EXPRESS), the Quick Invoice Entry component (VCHR_QUICK_PNL), or a source that is processed through the Voucher Build Application Engine process (AP_VCHRBLD).

2. Run the Voucher Posting Application Engine process (AP_PSTVCHR) and any other processes that are part of the voucher business practice, such as budget checking and matching.

3. Run the Pay Cycle process to generate payment schedules.

   The Pay Cycle process:

   • Selects vouchers that meet the criteria for federal payment schedules and groups them by schedule, creating new schedules according to the schedule restriction criteria that you specified on the Payment Schedule Restriction page.

   • Updates the payment schedule ID in the Schedule ID field on the Voucher - Payments page.

   • Kicks off workflow to notify certifiers of payment schedules needing certification (optional).

   • Creates a file for transmission to the U.S. Treasury for disbursement.

4. Certify the payment schedule.

   This step occurs during Pay Cycle processing, after payment selection and before payment creation.

   See Certifying Federal Payment Schedules.

5. Run the Payment Posting Application Engine process (AP_PSTPYMNT).

6. (Optional) Review the payment schedule using the Payment Inquiry page.

   See Inquiring and Reporting on Federal Payment Schedules.

7. Transmit the payment schedule file to the Department of Treasury.

8. For bulk payment schedule files (Type B SF1166 forms) only: after sending the bulk payment schedule file to the Department of Treasury and receiving summary certification data back from them, enter the summary certification data into the PeopleSoft database and generate an SF1166 Summary Certification file for uploading to the SPS system for certification.

   Use the SPS Summary Totals pages.

   See Creating SPS Payment Summary Files.

9. After receiving notice that the payment schedule was disbursed, reconcile the payment schedule using the Schedule ID Reconciliation page.

   See Managing Federal Schedule ID Reconciliations.

10. Run the Cash Clearing Application Engine process (AP_APCSHCLR).

There are many federal features in PeopleSoft Payables beyond those listed in the setup and processing steps discussed in this overview section. These options are also covered in this topic:

• Enforcing prompt payment protocols.

• Enforcing valid reimbursable periods.

• Processing IPAC transactions.

• Handling pay advances for federal agencies.

The System for Award Management (SAM) is a Federal Government owned and operated free government-wide portal developed by the General Service Administration’s (GSA) Office of the Integrated Award Environment (IAE) to consolidate the capabilities of multiple systems and information sources used by the Federal government in conducting the acquisition and financial assistance (which includes grants and cooperative agreements) processes. Both current and potential government suppliers are required to register in SAM in order to be awarded contracts by the Government, including:

• Entities who need to register to do business with the government, look for opportunities or assistance programs, or report subcontract information;

• Government contracting and grants officials responsible for activities with contracts, grants, past performance reporting and suspension and debarment activities;

• Public users searching for government business information.

Suppliers are required to complete a one-time registration to provide basic information relevant to procurement and financial transactions. Suppliers must update or renew their registration annually to maintain an active status. SAM validates the supplier's information and electronically shares the secure and encrypted data with the Federal agencies' finance offices to facilitate paperless payments through electronic funds transfer (EFT). Additionally, SAM shares the data with Government procurement and electronic business systems.

The interface from SAM to PeopleSoft transmits SAM entity data, both federal and commercial, that will enable PeopleSoft to:

• Create new suppliers for commercial and federal entities as well as customers for federal entities.

• Update existing suppliers or customers created from SAM data.

• Update manually entered suppliers and customers designated for SAM update.

• Update vouchers for expired SAM entities.

• Disable ordering for expired SAM entities.

• Update Withholding Alternate Name for the Supplier if different than Legal Name and if the Installation Option to update Taxpayer Name is selected.

The first step in the SAM process is to load the GSA-provided SAM file. PeopleSoft supports the Monthly and Daily .csv file formats for sensitivity levels of FOUO, Sensitive, or Public. The file load can be run from either the Supplier or Customer menu. When run from the Supplier menu, existing SAM supplier records are updated and when run from the Customer menu, existing SAM customer records are updated.

Creating SAM Suppliers and Customers: Once the SAM Load process is complete and staging tables are updated, you can view all the entity records and create either suppliers or customers using the USF_STAGING component. Suppliers can be created for commercial or federal entities by accessing the Maintain Entities page from the Supplier menu. Customers can be created for federal entities by accessing the Maintain Entities page from the Customer menu.

See Setting Up SAM Processing

When you, as a U.S. Federal agency, set up suppliers for payment processing, you may want to specify the default payment schedule type and date basis calculation type for the supplier, along with the standard supplier setup. You can also set up these options at other levels in the PeopleSoft Payables control hierarchy: business unit, origin, and control group.

For suppliers, you enter this information on the Federal page in the Supplier Information component, which is available only when you have Enable Federal Payments selected on the Installation Options - Payables page.

When you set up other U.S. Federal agencies as suppliers, you may also identify the suppliers as federal agencies and enter the supplier's ALC and trading partner code. The ALC is required if the supplier is used for inbound or outbound IPAC processing. You enter this information on the Supplier Information - Federal page, as well.

Specific federal payment processes may require particular supplier setup.