Covering Fees from the Incoming Deposit

This project will enhance the popular ACH Instant Deposits feature (otherwise known as ACH On Demand) to allow the fee to be covered by the incoming deposit, rather than requiring funds to already be in one of the member’s accounts to cover the fee before the deposit is made.

It’s important to understand that we cannot actually take the fee from the incoming deposit itself. When the ACH item is received, we have no idea what that deposit is committed to before we start. And for obvious reasons, we must post a transaction that equals what we received, for tracking purposes, in case the item is disputed or needs to be returned, possible trans reversals, etc. We also want to avoid unnecessary overhead on this transaction and to keep the solution as simple as possible, keeping in mind that ACH distributions can be complex.

Therefore, we will add an optional configuration flag so that your credit union can choose whether they care about funds being available beforehand or not. If you want to ensure funds are available, then the feature will continue working the same as it does now.

If you don’t mind the fee possibly taking the account balance below available or negative, then as long as the member chooses to take the fee from the base distribution (seq 99) account (assuming that’s a savings or checking account), then the system will simply ignore the balance on the account (including freezes, secured funds, par value, etc.) and allow the item and the fee to be posted, even if the fee ends up causing that account to be posted below available or to a negative balance.

Caveats:

• The fee is still posted as a separate transaction, after all distributions have been completed.
• We cannot test to ensure that if there are distributions, there will actually be any funds leftover in the base account to cover the fee. So the fee might still take that account below available or to a negative balance. Your collections team will need to be aware of this scenario.
• If the base distribution account (seq 99) is a loan (any type), to avoid problems with Reg Z fee disclosures, the member will be required to choose a different account for the fee, regardless of setting of the new config flag.
• Likewise, if the base distribution account (seq 99) is a tax escrow, IRA savings, or certificate account, the member will be required to choose a different account for fee, regardless of setting of the new config flag.

Status as of August 2023: Project # 60108 is currently in QC testing and is being targeted for the 24.05 release.

New ACH Credit Posting Enhancement

This project updates the ACH Posting Controls configuration (Tool #113) to allow the option to automatically post credits (deposits) for all companies as soon as they arrive in the warehouse.  Currently CUs must manually turn this feature on, one ACH company ID at a time, and many would prefer for this to be the default setting for all ACH companies instead.

The existing Allow early post/effective date override for specific Company IDs Y/N field on the ACH Posting Controls configuration will be expanded to have 3 options:

1=Allow early post/effective date override (credits only) for specific Company IDs

2=Post credits for all Company IDs immediately upon receipt, regardless of effective date

3=Do not allow early post

Option 1 will work as now, allowing CUs to manually set the Post incoming credit transactions early (effective date override) flag on individual ACH company records as desired.  Option 2 will effectively turn that flag on automatically, for all existing company IDs as well as for all new ACH companies as they are created.  (The specific method for accomplishing this is still being determined, as described later in this spec.)  Keep in mind that with option 2, the credit union will not be able to adjust a particular Company ID not to post early.  Every ACH credit that comes in will always post immediately no matter what.

Status as of August 2023: Project # 55403 is slated for the 23.10 release! 

Dashboard for Working the PACHSU

This project created a new tool so that credit unions can work suspense items with invalid account numbers in the ACH warehouse before they are posted for the first time, without having to print a hard copy of the PACHSU report to get the appropriate information needed to make the corrections.

Previously CUs had to rely on a printed report, either the one produced automatically when ACH items are received, or printed on demand via Tool #672 Print ACH Suspense File Report (PACHSU). The report can contain both NSF items as well as other errors such as invalid account numbers, although the on-demand report can be printed without NSFs.

This project created a new dashboard that takes data from the ACHSUS table, runs it through the same routines as currently happen when the PACHSU report is run, then displays all records with an invalid account base on a screen similar to the one used to work ACH exceptions after posting. This allows the user to adjust master distribution records prior to the effective posting date, so that items will be able to process normally when they are eventually posted.

Status as of August 2023:  Project #58337 was implemented in the 23.05 release! 

Chef for this recipe:  Karen Sorensen