Special ACH Processing

You can initiate special processing for an ACH deposit other than a payroll transaction so that the system can directly deposit ACH funds to an account without processing payroll distributions, for example regularly-scheduled commission or bonus checks. You must be set up with your sponsor company to by-pass the normal distributions and automatically deposit the special item directly to the member's account without making distributions.

To automatically deposit special ACH items, the system reads the Discretionary Data field on the detail record of the ACH transmission. Based upon the value in this field, and the ACH table for the company, specialized handling of an ACH transaction is provided.

For example, you might have your sponsor company specify the code B for "bonus pay." Then, the system would treat any payroll with code B as straight ACH and would not process payroll distributions, regardless of the member's information on the Member Payroll Maintenance dialog box.

Specialized handling of ACH processing is an option available at the OFI, company ID level. This means you can use this feature for one company and not be required to use it for others. However, you can only use the specialized handling of ACH processing with the support of the sponsor company.

To begin the specialized handling of your ACH deposits, contact the sponsor company to determine the value and the location on the detail record on the ACH transmission for the data field of your normal ACH transactions, which will be processed as payroll and require distributions.

The ACH Displacement and ACH Value fields on the ACH Processing Rules window accommodate special payroll handling. The ACH Displacement field indicates whether or not this company will use the special processing and where to find the value specified in the ACH Value field.

The ACH Value field indicates if the ACH item should be processed as payroll, which allows for distributions, or direct deposit without distributions to the share account, which is determined by the ACH transaction code.

For example, the sponsor company would like to include in your ACH transmission not only regular pay checks but also bonus checks and expense checks. In addition, your credit union does not plan to use any checks except regular paychecks to distribute funds, such as loan payments and transfers. Therefore, the company and the credit union select the following codes to use, and decide to place the codes in the Discretionary Data field (location 77) of the ACH transmission detail record.

R - Regular paycheck
B - Bonus check
T - Third paycheck in a month
E - Expense check

On the ACH table, the ACH Displacement field would specify 77 (location), and the ACH Value field would specify the value B (bonus payroll). The system will process all members with value B as straight ACH, posting the payroll as a direct deposit to the share account, according to the ACH transaction code, and not processing payroll distributions, regardless of the member's information on the Member Payroll Maintenance dialog box. The system will process members with values of R, T, or E as a true payroll.

Once your credit union and sponsor company have identified the special processing codes, notify Portico that you are interested in special ACH payroll processing and that you have spoken with your sponsor company. Then, submit a completed ACH Questionnaire.

If an originator sends debits and credits in the same ACH payroll file, you can process debits as straight ACH and credits as payroll by specifying 03 in the ACH Displacement field and 7 in the ACH Value field on the ACH Processing Rules window.