What is the ACH payment process?

DATABASICS provides ACH (Automated Clearing House) service to allow direct reimbursement of expense reports through electronic funds transfer. Set up of the process requires the following details:

• Company bank account information (where the amount is debited to be routed to individual accounts for payment):
  • Company Tax ID
  • Company Bank Account number
  • Company Routing Number
  • Bank Name (if available)
  • Account Type (Checking or Savings Account)

• Individual User Account Details:
  • Effective Date
  • Account number
  • Routing Number
  • Employee ID
  • Bank Name (if available)
  • Account Type (Checking or Savings Account)

Will all Expense Reports have to go through ACH for payment? Can we have a question or a rule that determines if the ER will be paid by AP or ACH?

All Expense Reports for the users with ACH bank account details provided will go through ACH payment. If necessary additional AP payment process will have to be configured if the users choose not to be reimbursed through ACH.

Can we have certain conditions on ACH payment for advances or Expense Reports under $50 to be excluded from ACH and be paid out of petty cash?

We have to determine ahead of time whether the advances need to go through ACH payment or not, but this rule will have to apply universally to all advances with no exceptions. So if we decide that advances are to be paid through ACH then all advances will need to go through ACH. If we decide that all advance are to be paid via check or processed manually in the application then all advances will have to follow the same logic. Otherwise we leave room for discrepancies.

Technically we can set a constraint on ACH extract to exclude any report below $50, but you will have to have a well defined process on how to handle the reports that are not being picked up by ACH to make sure that the reports do not slip without payment. This will need to be controlled on the finance level approval and these reports will have to be handled manually. Our recommendation is to be consistent on all reports.

Would everyone fill out a form with their banking information (similar to what we do when we want to use direct deposit for paychecks)?

This would have to be a client defined internal procedure

Does DATABASICS provide this form?

Companies will need to develop internal controlled procedure of gathering details necessary for ACH payment processing and any applicable forms, but the following fields are required:

• Effective Date
• Account number
• Routing Number
• Employee ID
• Bank Name (if available)
• Account Type (Checking or Savings Account)

Would the banking information be entered and associated with the User ID like a company credit card number is?

Correct. The expense module provides an attribute to an employee record where ACH details can be assigned to each user.

How are ACH details assigned to an employee?

There are two ways ACH details can be assigned to an employee:

• The Admin would enter the banking details manually on the Employee Record (Organization > Employee > ACH Accounts).
• The user will enter them from the Options screen (Tools > Options > ACH Accounts). This option can be enabled or disabled via T&E Access

Would it be a Sarbanes-Oxley issue if admin were to enter the banking info since admin could enter whatever bank information he/she wanted?

Access to the ACH details entry screen has to be limited to just one person and should not be a shared role, this will put a better control over the activity in case of a dispute. Each user has a pre-defined security role assigned to them in the Employee record. For most of them it is set to "No Admin Privileges" which gives them ability to submit/approve reports but no access to administrative functions.

The security roles for each user can be controlled through the application. The administrators can configure specific security roles for each user by giving them access to certain menu items if needed (without giving them the Main Administrator Role).The security roles are configurable.

The following access rights will have to be limited:

• Access to the ability to change user's security role
• Access to Security Role set up screen
• Access to ACH detail entry screen

Does ACH payment process trigger e-mail notifications when payment fails?

If there is an issue with individual payments the bank notifies DATABASICS and DATABASICS will generate a notification to an individual that will be listed as a contact for ACH related items for a company.

What is the ACH extract and payment frequency?

Can we set the ACH up for a weekly batch payment?

Yes the extract can be scheduled to run at any frequency, see step 1 in the table above. It will take up to 3-4 days from the date when the extract was run for the amount to show in the user's account.

How are the payments processed if a user has multiple reports ready for payment?

The number of payments correspond with the number of reports processed for payment, the end user will receive as many payments as many reports are processed in the amounts corresponding with the total reimbursable amount for each report instead of one lump sum. This is to facilitate reconciliation of payments.

How can the ACH payments be identified on the bank statement?

The transaction description will include Company name in the description as a payer

How can the ACH payment be stopped?

To attempt to stop ACH payment e-mail support@data-basics.com immediately. ACH payments can be stopped before the 11:00AM and 7:00PM pick up times. If a file has already been transferred to the bank, arrangements outside DATABASICS will have to be made directly with the user and the bank to reverse the transactions. DATABASICS only processes one way transactions from Company bank to the end user and is not able to debit end user's bank account for reverse transactions.

Can we reverse transactions through ACH?

DATABASICS only processes one way transactions from the Company bank to the end user and is not able to debit end user's bank account for reverse transactions.

USA Payment Schedule

Canada Payment Schedule