Processing Payment Batches in Billing Care

Processing Lockbox Batches

Lockbox processing is a typical way to handle externally initiated payments, reversals, and refunds. With lockbox processing, the bank sends you a record of the data, which you enter into the BRM database by using Billing Care.

Most banks that perform lockbox processing can format a text file according to your specifications. You can specify:

Which data to include
The format (fixed width or delimited)
The order of the entries
A batch header or footer. The batch header and footer can contain information common to all payments in the payment batch, and information specific to the batch, including the lockbox number, date, number of checks, and total payment amount. If a payment is missing information, the batch data is used.

You can have the bank deliver the file electronically, and you can use Billing Care to import data directly from the file. See "Importing Batch Payment Files into Billing Care".

Note:

You might need to create an application to retrieve the file.
If the bank creates the file with the EBCDIC character set, you must create an application to convert it to ASCII.
Payment Tool does not support the EDI 823 format.

Importing Batch Payment Files into Billing Care

You can import data from text files into Billing Care in batch payment format. For example, if you have electronic files of data formatted in columns, you can import that data into a batch instead of entering it manually.

Batch payment files are text files containing payment information, such as account number, payment amount, and payment date, in delimiter-separated rows. Each batch payment file that you import into Billing Care must have a unique file name.

Before you begin importing data, ensure that you know how your data is formatted:

When you import data, you must specify how the data is separated in columns (for example, with spaces or tabs). Open a file containing your data to see how it is formatted.
Your data can include information that is not formatted in columns (for example, a document heading). This information can be imported as the batch header and batch footer.
For payment data and refund data, there are two required columns:
- The amount paid
- Either the account number or the bill number
For payment reversal data, the only required column is the payment ID.

A typical input file looks like this:

Account Number,Payment Amount,Date,Check Number
0.0.0.1-887,19.95,5/11/99,1243
0.0.0.1-425,19.95,5/11/99,1543
0.0.0.1-776,19.95,5/11/99,1273
0.0.0.1-143,19.95,5/11/99,1254

Configuring Payment Tool to Lock at the Account Level during Batch Processing

When processing a batch of payments, Payment Tool locks all accounts associated with the batch and keeps them locked until it finishes processing the batch. This can cause problems if your batches contain a large number of payments, because other processes cannot access the accounts during payment processing.

You can configure Payment Tool to lock only the account that it is currently processing rather than the entire batch.

When processing payments in a batch, Payment Tool initiates the transaction for the entire batch and any errors that are encountered while processing any payment entry in the batch is ignored. However, when you configure Payment Tool to lock only the account it is currently processing, the payment item and payment event is recorded in the BRM database only when the payment entry is processed successfully. The payment is not recorded if any errors are encountered while processing the payment entry.

Note:

Processing payments at the account level rather than at the batch level can produce problems if the CM or Data Manager (DM) fails during payment processing; Payment Tool cannot determine which payments in the batch failed or were successfully processed. Thus, when you resubmit the batch for processing, Payment Tool may process a payment twice for the same account.

To find out which payments failed or were successful after a CM or DM failure, you must either check the logs or check in the database for failed /event/billing/payment/pay_type events with the correct batch ID. Then, you must batch only the failed payments and submit it to Payment Tool for processing.

To configure Payment Tool to lock at the account level when processing a batch of payments:

Open the CM configuration file (BRM_home/sys/cm/pin.conf) in a text editor.
Edit the payment_batch_lock entry:
```
- fm_pymt payment_batch_lock 0
```
Use 0 to lock at the account level or 1 to lock at the batch level.
Save and close the file.
Stop and restart the CM.

Managing Nonvalidated Batch Entries

While processing a payment, refund, or reversal batch, you might have some entries that cannot be validated easily. You can create a batch that includes only those entries with validation errors. This enables you to submit the entries that can be validated. If Payment Suspense Manager is enabled, you can manually suspend any invalid payments and continue with submitting the batch.

To create a batch of nonvalidated entries, first validate the batch, then choose Tools - Create Exception Batch. A new batch is created that includes only invalid batches. The invalid batches are removed from the validated batch.