Open topic with navigation

Banks

This chapter contains the following topic:

Introduction to Banks

Entering Banks

Printing Bank Lists

Introduction to Banks

The Banks selection contains information about banks used for generating direct deposit ACH and Positive pay file data. It also contains information about where you locate these files.

This selection is relevant if you are using either direct deposit ACH or Positive pay in Accounts Payable or ACH Direct Deposit or positive pay in Payroll. Banks are needed when setting up vendors in A/P and employees in P/R. If you are not using direct deposit ACH or positive pay in A/P and PR there is no need to enter any banks.

There is a cash account associated with each bank.You must enter at least one Valid G/L account and Cash account before you start entering bank information.

ACH is an acronym for Automated Clearing House. See the Glossary for a definition of the key term ACH or Automated Clearing House.

Both positive pay and direct deposit ACH data are printed to a file as a part of the check printing process:

There are two types of direct deposit methods for Payroll as defined in Payroll Control information: Report only and Electronic payment. Setting up banks is only required for the Electronic payment method.

You will be entering two bank types. At least one company bank that processes the ACH and/or positive pay file with any number of receiving banks depending on the number of Vendor or Employee banks required.

The minimum and maximum number of banks required for positive pay and direct deposit ACH varies. This table illustrates the number of banks that may be utilized for Accounts Payable and Payroll.

All direct deposit ACH processing is contained within PBS except the actual transmission to the company processing bank. It requires that the company choose a processing bank that accepts the standard ACH (Automated Clearing House) format. The ACH file, required by the processing bank, is automatically generated when the Register is printed during the check run.

For more information on direct deposit ACH and positive pay processing see the Implement Positive Pay and Direct Deposit appendix in the Accounts Payable user documentation. For more information on direct deposit ACH and positive pay processing in Payroll, see the Implement Positive Pay and Direct Deposit appendix in the Payroll user documentation.

For an explanation of each field for each record in an ACH file, see the Direct Deposit ACH File Specifications appendix in the PBS Administration documentation.

Entering Banks

A bank can be one of two types: ACH and Company /ACH. There is only one tab required for entering an ACH bank. Two tabs are required for entering a Company /ACH bank.

Tab 1 - General Bank Information

Select

Banks from the CTL menu.

Graphical Mode

The following screen displays:

Banks List Box

The list box displays up to 6 existing banks at a time. You may sort the list by bank #,bank name and account #, all in ascending or descending order. Click on the column name or the arrow to the right of the column name to change the sort or use the View options. Only column names in red may be sorted.

To find a bank via the list box, the focus must be on the box (the data displays as blue). To locate a bank, start typing the number, name or account number depending on which sort field is selected. You may also use the up/down arrows, Page up, Page down, Home and End keys to locate a bank. The <F1> and <SF1> keys function the same as the up/down arrow keys.

Banks that display in the list box are available for changes or deletion. The fields for the selected bank display in the lower part of the screen.

When a bank is found, you may select the <Enter> key or Edit button to start editing.

Banks Buttons

When you are adding or editing a bank you have the following button options:

Menu Selections

At the top left of the screen, a variety of menu selections are available. Most of these are the similar from screen to screen. If a menu selection is grayed out, you will not be able to access it. The selections that are unique to this screen are explained here:

Select Print to print a list of banks. See Printing Bank Lists

Character Mode

The following screen displays:

Enter the following information for the first tab (screen 1 in character):

Bank code

This field can only be entered when adding a new bank.

Options 

Enter a valid bank code number, or use one of the options:

Name

Enter a valid bank name.

Options 

The options for lookup by the name field are only available in character mode. For graphical mode, see the Banks List Box. In character mode you may use one of the options:

Bank type

This field can only be entered when you are adding a new bank. Enter the bank type. There are 2 choices:

An ACH bank indicates that it is either a vendor bank or an employee bank. This is also know as the receiving bank. See Receiving Bank.

A Company ACH bank is the processing bank. See Processing Bank.

It is possible that a vendor or employee may use the same bank as the company ACH processing bank. This also applies if positive pay is used.

Cash account #

This field cannot be entered if this is an ACH bank type. See Bank type

This cash account will be credited for the ACH amount.

When you enter a cash account during the process of printing checks, it identifies the bank record that you are using.

You may enter one cash account for one bank. They have a one to one relationship.

This account is not on file - would you like to add it ?

If you entered an account number that is not one of the Valid G/L accounts, then you will get this message. Select Yes if you want to add the account to the Valid G/L accounts or select No to re-enter the account number.

Would you like to match the checking account information?

This message will only display if Check Reconciliation is installed.

If you select Yes, then the matching address and contact fields from the C/R Checking account will fill in the fields here.

ABA routing #

Enter the ABA bank number. This is sometimes known as the bank routing number.

The bank ABA routing # is used in two areas:

Options 

The first digit of an ABA routing number must be 0, 1, 2 or 3 and all digits should be numeric.

Bank routing number format: TTTTAAAAA where TTTT = routing transit and AAAAA = ABA number.

It must be 9 digits long, numeric and an expected numeric format. If not the expected format you will see the following message:

Regardless of this message you may continue with the number as entered or change it.

Changing the ABA Routing Number

If you change the ABA routing number a program validation is done against the Vendor and Employee Direct Deposit setup records to see if the Bank code is being used. If it is used a the following warning message displays to indicate the change will affect such records:

If you select yes to make the change another message displays to indicate that each Vendor and Employee using this bank will have the DDA Prenote reset. When this happens you will have to return to each Vendor and Employee bank record and make appropriate changes.

When saving the Bank record with the modified routing number the program updates the Prenote flag to "Y" on any Vendor and Employee Direct Deposit setup record using this bank. For Vendor records the Vendor change log is also updated.

If you do not wish to make the change select No to either question and the previous Bank routing # is restored. You may continue making other changes or cancel the editing.

Bank account #

This field cannot be entered if this is an ACH bank type. For ACH type banks enter the Bank account number for Vendors in A/P Vendors and for Payroll in Employees.

Enter your company’s bank account number. It is written to the A/P or P/R direct deposit ACH file.

Address-1
Address-2 and
Address-3

Three lines are provided for the bank address. All three are optional and are not required for ACH or positive pay processing. There are no rules about where the city and zip code go; you may wish to adopt your own standard about this.

Country

Enter the country code where the bank is located. This field is optional.

Contact

Enter the name of the person to contact at this bank location.

Phone

Enter the contact’s phone number.

Fax

Enter the bank’s fax number.

E-mail

Enter the email address.

Comments

Enter any comments about the bank.

In character mode, this field uses Passport’s text editing function. Refer to the Using Notes section in chapter 4 of this documentation.

Make any changes as needed.

If this is an ACH bank type, select the Save button to save the new ACH bank record or save any changes made to an existing record.

If this is a Company ACH bank type, you must also enter fields on the second tab.

Tab 2 - Company Bank Details

Graphical Mode

The following screen displays:

Character Mode

The following screen displays:

Enter the following information for screen 2:

ACH company name

Enter your company name.

If this field is left blank, then direct deposit ACH processing is not used for this company bank. You may set up fields 8 through 11 for positive pay for Accounts Payable and Payroll.

ACH company tax ID/no.

In most cases this field will contain your company’s Federal Tax ID number. However, contact a representative from your bank to determine what should go in this field.

The first position is either a blank, 1, 3 or 9. Following the first position enter your company’s Federal Tax ID number as the immediate origin, unless your bank forwards the ACH records to another bank or the Federal Reserve.

There are certain acceptable formats for this field and they include the following:

The contents of this field will be written to the ACH file.

ACH generate offset

If your bank requires a debit offset amount written to the ACH file, check this box (select Y), otherwise leave it unchecked (select N). This amount is auto-calculated.

ACH file format

This field applies to both Accounts Payable and Payroll.

There are differences between Windows (DOS) and UNIX/Linux in how the end of a text line is terminated. A line in a DOS file will end with a carriage return and line feed (CR/LF). A line in a UNIX/Linux file will end with a line feed only (LF). For more information see the definition for Carriage return in appendix C.

This field determines if the ACH file has line feeds only (LF) or both carriage returns and line feeds (CR/LF) at the end of each line. The choices are different depending on the operating system where PBS is installed.

The choices on a Windows system are 0 = Operating system default - CR/LF DOS file or 1 = Line feed only UNIX/Linux file. In UNIX and Linux the choices are 0 = Operating system default - line feed only UNIX/Linux file and 1 = CR/LF DOS file.

If you are unsure which file format to use, ask someone from your bank the format they prefer. If you are still unsure, select the operating system default and send a test ACH file to your bank using that choice. A representative from the bank will let you know if you need to try the other option.

Is imm-origin your company

Immediate origin refers to the entity that sends the ACH file to the final destination. If your bank is the final destination, the immediate origin is your company. If you send the ACH file to your bank and they route the file to another entity, like the Federal Reserve System central bank, then your bank is the immediate origin.

If the immediate origin is your company, check this box (select Y), otherwise leave it unchecked (select N).

If you are sending the file to your bank and then routed to a Federal Reserve Bank, then leave it unchecked (select N).

For an explanation of how the immediate origin settings effect the ACH file output, see the Use of Fields for Immediate Origin Options section of the Direct Deposit ACH File Specifications appendix in the PBS Administration documentation.

Imm-origin name

If your company is the immediate origin, then enter your company name. If not then enter the name of your bank.

What you enter here gets written to the ACH header record. The information in this field ties to field 4.

ACH imm-origin tax ID

or

ACH imm-origin ABA routing #

If you entered Y for the Is imm-origin your company field, then enter your company’s tax ID number. If you entered N for that field, then it is your bank’s routing number.

The first position is a blank, 1, 3 or 9. Following the first position enter your company’s Federal Tax ID number as the immediate origin, unless your bank forwards the ACH records to another bank or the Federal Reserve.

There are certain acceptable formats for this field and they include the following:

The contents of this field will be written to the ACH file which will be submitted to your bank.

A/P setup

ACH path\file name

You cannot enter this field if you do not have Accounts Payable and the Generate ACH field is not checked in the A/P Control information.

There are two files created during the direct deposit ACH process in Accounts Payable. There is the primary ACH file and the backup ACH file.

Enter the path and file name of the primary ACH file that will be submitted to your bank or use the option:

The backup ACH files are also created, by default, in the same directory defined in this field however the backup name is auto-generated.

Each time an ACH file is generated, if the previous ACH file is still there, it will be overwritten. This only applies to the primary ACH file and not the backup files.

If you need more information, go to the A/P User documentation Implement Positive Pay and Direct Deposit Appendix in the section called ACH File Name, Path and Backup.

Positive pay form #

You may only enter this field if you have Accounts Payable and you checked the A/P Control information Generate positive pay field. Otherwise it cannot be entered.

Enter the name of the Accounts Payable positive pay form. Positive pay forms are entered under the A/P Master information menu selection of Positive pay forms.

You may skip this field during initial entry, but you must create a positive pay form and fill in this field before you do a check run with A/P positive pay activated.

Positive pay path\file name

You must enter the Positive pay form # field before you can enter this field. If A/P positive pay is active, then you must enter this field before you do a check run.

Enter the path and file name of the primary ACH file that will be submitted to your bank or use the default option.

The backup ACH files are also created, by default, in the same directory defined in this field. The backup file name is auto-generated.

Each time an ACH file is generated, if the previous ACH file is still there, it will be overwritten. This only applies to the primary ACH file and not the backup files.

P/R setup

ACH path\file name

There are two files created during the direct deposit ACH process in Payroll. There is the primary ACH file and the backup ACH file.

Enter the path and file name of the primary ACH file that will be submitted to your bank or use the default option.

The backup ACH file is also created, by default, in the same directory defined in this field but the name of the backup file cannot be changed.

Each time an ACH file is generated, if the previous primary ACH file is still there, it will be overwritten. This only applies to the primary ACH file but not the backup ACH files.

If you need more information, go to the P/R User documentation appendix Implement Positive Pay and Direct Deposit section called ACH File Name, Path and Backup.

Positive pay form #

You may only enter this field if you have Payroll and you checked the P/R Control information Generate positive pay field. Otherwise it cannot be entered.

Enter the name of the Payroll positive pay form. Positive pay forms are entered under the P/R Master information menu selection of Positive pay forms.

You may skip this field during initial entry, but you must create a positive pay form and fill in this field before you do a check run with Payroll positive pay activated.

Positive pay path\file name

You must enter the payroll Positive pay form # field before you can enter this field. If Payroll positive pay is active, then you must enter this field before you do a check run.

Enter the path and file name of the primary positive pay file that will be submitted to your bank or use the default option.

A backup positive pay file is also created, by default, in the same directory defined in this field. Each time a positive pay file is generated the previous positive pay file is overwritten. However the backup positive pay files are retained.

Select the Save button to save the new record or any changes to the record. See Banks Buttons for all the options.

Using character, select <Enter> to save the new bank record or save any changes made to an existing record.

Select the <Esc> key to not save the new record or all changes to the record.

Printing Bank Lists

This report will print a list of banks.

Select

Banks from the CTL Reports menu. The following screen displays:

Graphical Mode

Character Mode

Enter the following information:

Starting bank

Options 

Enter a valid bank number, or use the option:

Ending bank

Options 

Enter a valid bank number, or use the option:

Bank type

Enter the bank type. There are 3 choices:

An ACH bank indicates that it is either a vendor bank or an employee bank.

It is possible that a vendor or employee may use the same bank as the company. So, a Company ACH bank can be the same location where a vendor or employee banks.

Print comments

Indicate if you are going to print bank comments on the list.

OK or Cancel

Select a field number to change or select the <Enter> key to print the report.

Open topic with navigation