Processing Pay Cycles

This chapter provides an overview of pay cycle manager and discusses how to:

• Run pay cycles.

• Review vouchers selected for payment.

• Handle pay cycle exceptions and alerts.

• Review draft payments.

• View the trial register.

• Approve the pay cycle.

• Verify payment references.

• Produce manual positive payment files.

• Recreate checks.

• Run the Pay Cycle job.

See Also

Establishing Pay Cycles

Setting Up Payment Formats and Payment Forms

Configuring the Payables Payment Interface

Using Additional Payment Processing Options

Processing Prepayments

Processing Drafts

(USF) Processing Payables for U.S. Federal Agencies

Understanding Pay Cycle Manager

This section discusses:

• Pay Cycle process flow.

• Pay Cycle statuses.

• Pay Cycle exceptions.

• Draft payments.

• Payment formatting.

• Separate payments.

• Payment sorting.

• Check payments that never reach the banking system.

• Pay Cycle processing using the Payables Payment Interface.

• Pay Cycle processing using the Financial Gateway.

Pay Cycle Manager is the focal point for managing payments in Payables. From the Pay Cycle Manager page, you process each of the Pay Cycle Application Engine process (AP_APY2015) steps necessary to turn bank account, vendor, voucher, and business unit information into actual payments. Use Pay Cycle Manager to initiate the Pay Cycle process, view and send payments to a printer or a file, and create ACH files, drafts, EFT files, wire transfer reports, and positive payment files.

The Pay Cycle Manager integrates much of the data entered into Payables and uses this payment data not only to create the negotiable documents but also to provides information for reports. Many of the activities of Payables lead to or come from the Pay Cycle Manager.

Pay Cycle Process Flow

The individual processes—such as payment selection, payment creation, EFT formatting, printing checks, and creating positive payment files—that turn vouchers into payments are referred to collectively as the pay cycle and are all processed by the Pay Cycle process. Here is a diagram of the process flow for the Pay Cycle process (not all of the processes indicated would necessarily be included in a single pay cycle):

Pay cycle process flow

See Also

Establishing Pay Cycles

Pay Cycle Statuses

The Pay Cycle Manager is the place to go any time during this process of creating payments. It tells you exactly where your payments are in the payment process and keeps you informed of the current status of a pay cycle.

Pay Cycle Exceptions

The Pay Cycle Manager page notifies you of any exceptions that might occur during processing and transfers you to the appropriate page so that you can decide how best to handle these conditions. These exceptions pages include:

• Pay Cycle Errors page.

• Lost Discount Alert page.

• Discounts Denied page.

• Withholding exception page.

• Bank Replacement Exceptions page.

See Also

(USF) Processing Payables for U.S. Federal Agencies

Draft Payments

During the Pay Cycle process, draft payments go through three steps:

See Also

Processing Drafts

Reviewing Draft Payments

Payment Formatting

Payables provides powerful payment formatting capabilities that let you build a variety of payment forms to meet your business needs. The following table lists the standard payment forms that Payables provides, along with the output processes called by the Pay Cycle process to produce the payment file:

See Also

Setting Up Payment Formats and Payment Forms

Separate Payments

Typically, multiple scheduled payments to one vendor in a pay cycle are bundled into one payment. This is not the case when the vendor payment options specify separate payments for each scheduled payment,

You can specify:

• Separate payments for a scheduled payment upon voucher entry.

• Separate payments for a scheduled payment on the Pay Cycle Data Details page after Payment Selection processing.

• That the scheduled payments have different payment handling codes. In this scenario, the system produces one payment for each handling code.

Payment Sorting

Payables sorts payments at two hierarchical levels, payment handling code sequence and sort field sequence.

The first in priority is the payment handling code sequence, which you set up on the Payment Handling Codes page. If you give a high sequence number (the delivered number is 99) to the payment handling code HD, or High Dollar Payment (which is applicable not just to dollars, but to any large amount payment), any payment that is assigned a payment handling code of HD will be among the last to be produced by your output process (that is, printed last), and will therefore be at the top of your pile of checks, ready for any special handling, such as special signatures. This functionality works in conjunction with your bank account setup; when you set up bank accounts, you can select to override the payment handling code on a voucher with the High Dollar Payment code for any voucher that exceeds a specified amount.

The second in priority is the sort sequence by payment field that you define for each form ID on the Sort Fields page. You can define check sorting sequence by any of the following payment fields:

• Remit Zip Code

• Payment Handling

• Bank SetID

• Bank Code

• Bank Account

• Payment Method

• Remit SetID

• Remit Vendor

• Name 1

Note. To print payments in dollar amount order, you must first run a script and configure fields on the Sort Fields page. This is fully discussed in the Specifying Payment Form Attributes documentation.

See Also

Specifying Payment Form Attributes

Defining Payment Handling Codes

Establishing Payment Sort Fields

Defining Account Information

Check Payments that Never Reach the Banking System

After the system creates payments, it automatically marks as reconciled those check payments that never reach the banking system, such as:

• Voided checks

• Alignment checks

• Overflow checks

Pay Cycle Processing using the Payables Payment Interface

When you process pay cycles that include payments interfaced through the Payables Payment Interface, such as payments sourced from Expenses and Treasury, you must process the pay cycles serially, one pay cycle at a time. If multiple pay cycles that include interfaced payments from the same source are run at the same time, payments may be generated more than once for the same source document.

If you are using Expenses to generate cash advance and expense report payments, after Pay Cycle Manager has completed, you can also opt to perform Expenses' Consolidate Vendor Payment process. This process includes the following tools that enable you to review and manage the vendor consolidated payment reconciliation process:

• Vendor Payments Crystal report (EXC9000) that contains summarized information of payments for corporate card vendors.

• Vendor Payments Export to File Application Engine process (EX_VNDPT_EXP) that creates a flat file of corporate card vendors payments, which can be saved as a spreadsheet.

See Also

Configuring the Payables Payment Interface

Running Expense Transaction Processes

Pay Cycle Processing using the Financial Gateway

This section discusses:

• Pay Cycle processing through Financial Gateway.

• Payment cancellation.

• Payments in error.

Pay Cycle Processing through Financial Gateway

You can submit approved payments electronically through the Financial Gateway, using Pay Cycle Manager. The Financial Gateway can be considered a web service agent or service oriented architecture (SOA). It provides certain PeopleSoft financial applications with payment processing capabilities, such as formatting payments, message acknowledgement, security features, and direct communication to financial institutions.

The Pay Cycle Manager only settles payments of EFT, ACH, and WIR payment methods through Financial Gateway.

For wires, how you settle wires causes different results. When the system settles wires through Pay Cycle Manager, it results in the Pay Cycle process producing just an advice. If the system settles wires through Financial Gateway, the system uses the defined form ID and layout for the electronic settlement. In addition, the system changes the wire label from wire report to wire as it is no longer simply producing a hard-copy report.

Note. You control whether an approved payment is processed through the Financial Gateway by selecting a check box on the External Accounts – Payment Methods page. If you do not want a payment settled through Financial Gateway, you should clear this check box prior to scheduling payments on the voucher.

Certain Payables processes help create the Financial Gateway specific payments:

• During the Pay Cycle payment selection and creation process (AP_APY2015), the system flags all payments marked for Financial Gateway settlement. This process also does the following:

  • Groups payments based on certain criteria, which includes layout code and settle through field information.

  • Validates that the correct payment layout code is used if the bank replacement functionality is used.

• During the Voucher Build process (AP_VCHRBLD), the system validates the correct layout code.

  • If the layout code is undefined on the Vendor Pay table (VENDOR_PAY), the process retrieves the default value from the Bank Payment Layout table (BANK_PYMNT_LYT).

  • If the layout code is defined on the Vendor Pay table, the process validates this value against values stored in the Bank Payment Layout table and ensures that the layout can be settled by Financial Gateway.

After payment selection and creation, the system inserts these Financial Gateway specific payments into a new pay cycle process row in the pay cycle result grid (PYCYCL_STATRPT) in Pay Cycle Manager. Clicking the Process button triggers the following system actions:

1. Invokes the Payables Financial Gateway Application Engine process (AP_FG_PROC), which creates payment messages. Payment messages hold both the general settlement information (such as bank, routing, vendor bank, and payment advice information) and payment information. In addition to exchanging messages with the Financial Gateway, the Payables Financial Gateway Application Engine process and the AP Payment online Application Class handle various background processing tasks for payments; for example, populating temporary and staging tables with payment data and updating payment statuses.

2. Assigns a unique Financial Gateway payment ID number.

   • Based on the number defined in maximum transactions per message in Financial Gateway Installation table (INSTALLATION_FG), the system limits the number of payments held in each payment message . Exceeding this limit triggers the next payment ID's creation.

   • You set the payment ID on the Source Registration page in the Financial Gateway functionality. The batch name is an identification number to represent all the payments for a pay cycle, consisting of a concatenated string of the pay cycle ID number and the pay cycle sequence number.

3. After Financial Gateway receives the payment message from Payables, the system loads payments to Financial Gateway tables for further processing and transmittal to the bank.

4. Financial Gateway sends acknowledgement messages to Payables indicating if the payment dispatch process is successful or not.

   • If successful, Payables updates the payments' status to Loaded. When requested by the Financial Gateway, the status is then updated.

   • If unsuccessful, Financial Gateway sends error messages to Payables. Payables consolidates the messages before sending error notification to user through email (You enable the error notification function by entering an user ID on the Payment Selection Criteria page.)

5. Financial Gateway schedules and transmits the payments to the bank, sending asynchronous acknowledgement messages back to Payables containing payment information. Payables uses this information to update the payments' status to Paid, Error, or other statuses. During this part of the process, the Financial Gateway payment information displays on various Financial Gateway and Payables inquiry pages.

Payables and eSettlements payment processing with Financial Gateway

Note. If the Financial Gateway Application Engine process abends during processing, you can restart the process using the Process Monitor in the Process Scheduler. The process begins again from where it abended (or ended).

Once the payment processing is complete, you can use the following pages to review information:

Payables pages:

• Pay Cycle Details (PYCYCL_DATA_INQ).

• Pay Cycle Approval (PYCYCL_APPROVAL).

• Payment Inquiry (PYMNT_INQ_SRCH).

Financial Gateway pages:

• Review Payments (PMT_INQUIRY).

• Review Payment Details (PMT_LIFE_CYCLE_INQ).

• Review Payment Files (PMT_FILE_DEFN).

• Review Acknowledgement Files (PMT_FILE_ACK_DEFN).

Payment Cancellation

You can cancel payments that display a settlement status of Loaded, Hold, or Error. Canceling a Financial Gateway payment triggers the following system actions:

1. The system sends a cancel message to Financial Gateway.

2. Financial Gateway receives the message, and manages the cancel request depending on the settlement status.

   • Loaded: Payments with a loaded status may be on the staging table and pending transmission to the bank, or they may be in active transmission to the bank.

     If the payment is still pending transmission, Financial Gateway removes the payment from the staging tables and sends an acknowledgement message back to Payables. Payables then updates the payment's status to Canceled.

     If the payment is in active transmission, Financial Gateway prohibits the cancellation and sends an error message to Payables. For these situations, you must wait for Payables to display a payment status of Paid, and then cancel the payment.

   • Hold: For held payments, Financial Gateway removes the payment from the staging tables and sends an acknowledgement message to Payables. Payables then updates the payment's status to Canceled.

   • Error: Financial Gateway holds payments on the staging tables due to errors encountered during Financial Gateway or bank processing. To cancel payments in error, Financial Gateway updates the staging and update error tables and sends an acknowledgement message to Payables. Payables then updates the payment's status to Canceled.

In some cases, payment statuses may be out of synchronicity between Payables and Financial Gateway. When a payment has a Canceled status in Payables, no messages are transmitted between Payables and Financial Gateway. “Out of synch” payment statuses generally occur when users reverse and save a canceled payment. At Save, the system displays a warning message stating that saving the reverse canceled payment may disrupt the synchronization between the two systems.

Payments in Error

During processing through the Financial Gateway functionality, the system marks payments that have processing errors, and sends individual or batch messages to Payables that the payments cannot be settled. The system then sends payment error notification emails to specified user IDs if you define the required notification parameters, such as user's email address in user preference and user ID in the payment selection criteria. This payment error notification email contains payment error summary information and a link to the Pay Cycle Error page for error correction.

As error payments can be related to different pay cycles, the system first determines if the payment requires email notification, then bundles those errors requiring notification together into a single email.

See Setting Up the Financial Gateway Integration.

Common Elements Used in This Chapter

Running and Managing Pay Cycles

This section discusses how to process and manage pay cycles.

Pages Used to Run and Manage a Pay Cycle

Processing and Managing Pay Cycles

Access the Pay Cycle Manager page.

Starting the Pay Cycle

Start the pay cycle by clicking the process button for either Payment Selection or Payment Selection & Creation. The Pay Cycle Manager searches for all banks and payment methods defined for the pay cycle. Each type of output is placed in a row in the Pay Cycle Results grid after Payment Creation process has completed. You can enter an Output Destination for each row or accept the Output Destination that defaults from the User Preferences.

Pay Cycle Processes and Output Processes

Pay cycle processes are the applications that must run before you start receiving output from each bank account or payment method. These processes can consist of Payment Selection, Draft Staging, and Payment Creation, individually. You can run them all together by selecting Payment Selection & Creation. Click the Process button next to the process you want to perform.

After all pay cycle processes are executed, the Pay Status changes to Created or Approved, depending on whether user approval is required. If approval is required, you perform approval at this point. You are now ready to produce an output file. All output processes are listed in the Pay Cycle Result grid near the bottom of the page. There is a process button for each output process that can be generated for the pay cycle (for example, printing a check for a different bank account, printing an advice, or generating EFT files). After you have run the output process once, the Process button changes to Recreate, which links you to the Recreate Checks page, where you can recreate payments. The Pay Cycle status does not change to Complete until you have finished running all output processes.

Note. (USF) If you are a U.S. federal customer that requires payment schedule certification , this certification must occur after Payment Selection. This means you must run Payment Selection and Payment Creation separately.

Note. When running multiple pay cycles in parallel and in large volume, we recommend that you set up different business units and banks in pay cycles to avoid contention issues. Running several pay cycles in parallel for the same bank may cause processing issues.

Common Page Information

Pay Cycle Status

Process

Each row contains a Process button, a Server field, and a display-only description of an available pay cycle process. Some processes are available only if you are creating certain types of payments. For example, Draft Staging is only available if you are processing draft payments.

Processes are not available and no longer appear once they have been completed.

To run a process, select a server and click the process button for the process row. The server drop-down list shows only servers that have a status of Running on the Process Monitor Server List page. The system performs validation before a process is initiated to ensure that the Process Scheduler server is currently running.

The standard processes are:

Pay Cycle Exceptions

The links in this group box become active only if there are pay cycle exceptions after the Payment Selection and/or Payment Creation processes have been run. If a payment is marked with an exception (except for discounts lost exceptions), it is rejected for further processing within the pay cycle. You must either correct or override the exception and run the payment as part of another pay cycle.

Pay Cycle Reset

Pay Cycle Results - Main Information tab

Once the Payment Creation process is complete, the Pay Cycle Results grid displays a row of data for each output process that must be run to generate payment files and negotiable documents. For EFT payments, as all payments regardless of bank account run as one output process, only one EFT row can appear. For checks, advices, positive payment files, and file copies, each bank account and payment method combination runs as a separate output process. This means multiple check rows, positive payment rows, and so forth, can appear in the grid.

Pay Cycle Results - Additional Info tab

Resetting Pay Cycles

You can reset a payment cycle in the Pay Cycle Manager if you decide against creating any payments for the selected vouchers. This option gives you the flexibility to deselect vouchers for payment after you run a pay cycle, but before you print the checks. You can reset a pay cycle after Payment Selection, but to reset after Payment Creation requires extra steps. To reset after Payment Creation, go through Pay Cycle Approval to reject the pay cycle. Then perform the reset.

Note. Payables marks vouchers as selected once Payment Selection runs. No other transactions may occur on the selected vouchers. If you decide not to produce payment files or print checks for these vouchers, reset the selection so that a later pay cycle can reselect the vouchers.

Note. Resetting a pay cycle that is using bank account replacement reverses the bank replacement. For example, say that a payment is coming from bank account A, and that during the pay cycle, bank account B replaces bank account A. If you reset the pay cycle for this payment, the payment reverts to the original account, which is bank account A.

Completing the Pay Cycle

When you have successfully selected your payments, viewed and processed any exceptions, generated payments, approved the pay cycle, produced payment outputs, confirmed payment reference numbering, and formatted and produced the positive payment file (if required), the Pay Cycle Manager shows a status of Completed.

See Also

Establishing Pay Cycles

(USF) Processing Payables for U.S. Federal Agencies

Reviewing Vouchers Selected for Payment

This section discusses how to:

• Review pay cycle data.

• Review summary data.

• Review summary data by bar chart.

After you complete the Payment Selection process, you might find it necessary to review the voucher payments that have been selected for payment, place certain payments on hold, temporarily exclude some from the pay cycle, enforce separate payments for some, or review total payment amounts for the pay cycle by various criteria before you proceed with the Payment Creation process and your output processes.

See Also

Reviewing Voucher, Payment, and Vendor Information

Pages Used to Review Vouchers Selected for Payment

Reviewing Pay Cycle Data

Access the Pay Cycle Details page.

Select a pay cycle and click the Search button to view all scheduled voucher payments selected for your current pay cycle. You can limit your search using the other fields. For example, you might want to limit your search to a certain business unit.

Scheduled Payments

You can view selected scheduled payments and take action to hold, exempt, flag as a separate payment, or hold and flag as separate.

Payment Details

This section displays general payment information, such as bank, account, payment method, and payment date.

Additional Details

This section displays additional payment information, such as pay group ID, EFT layout, and settle by method.

Action Buttons

Other Links

Reviewing Summary Data

Access the Pay Cycle Summary page.

Payment Method Summary

Reviewing a Pay Cycle Summary Data Chart

Access the Pay Cycle Summary Metric page.

The Payments by Bank and Method chart is available for a pay cycle once Payment Selection has run, and displays all payment amounts for a single currency in the pay cycle, summarized by bank account and payment method. Clicking a bar on the chart displays the list of vouchers that are summarized and represented on the chart.

Handling Pay Cycle Exceptions and Alerts

This section provides an overview of pay cycle alerts and discusses how to:

• Handle potential lost discounts.

• Handle denied discounts.

• View withholding alerts.

• View Pay Cycle errors.

• View bank replacement exceptions.

Understanding Alerts

This section discusses general pay cycle alerts and discount evaluation alerts.

After you run the Payment Selection and Payment Creation processes, you may find that one or more of the links in the Pay Cycle Exceptions group box in Pay Cycle Manager becomes available. This means you have an exception or an alert to view and handle. Some of these exceptions are logged after Payment Selection has completed; you can usually take immediate action to handle these exceptions before continuing with pay cycle processing. Others are logged only after Payment Creation is completed; these can be viewed as informational only, and usually require handling outside of the pay cycle pages before running them in a later pay cycle.

Discount Evaluation Alerts

The Discount Evaluation feature compares the potential interest income with the discount amount and determines if taking a discount is economically feasible.

Payables uses the Number of Days in Year to compute the annual discount effective rate. Payables is delivered with a default number of 360 days, in accordance with U.S. federal specifications; but you can override that default on the External Accounts - Accounts Information page.

During the pay cycle, the system calculates the due dates for vouchers based on the invoice date, invoice receipt date, acceptance date, or constructive receipt date, in conjunction with the payment terms (interest rates versus payment discounts).

If the bank interest income is greater than the amount of the discount, the pay cycle drops the voucher from the process. If a payment is denied, the system provides a discount denied alert so that you can pay the voucher if you choose to.

See Also

Creating, Updating, and Reusing Pay Cycles

Defining Account Information

Pages Used to Handle Pay Cycle Exceptions and Alerts

Handling Potential Lost Discounts

Access the Lost Discount Alert page.

This page alerts you to any discount lost on a pay cycle. If you selected the Include Discount flag on Payment Selection Criteria for the pay cycle, then all payments with potential lost discounts are automatically paid in the pay cycle, and this page is not applicable. You must view this page after Payment Selection has run and before you run Payment Creation to use the Include button to include a payment with a potential lost discount.

Note. All discount alerts are cleared automatically when you rerun a completed pay cycle.

Note. Lost rebates are not tracked and don't appear on this page.

Voucher Information

Invoice Amounts

See Also

Understanding Alerts

Handling Discounts Denied

Access the Discount Denied Alert page.

The fields on this page are the same as the fields on the Lost Discount Alert page, except that this page shows discounts that were evaluated as not worth taking. If you access the page after running Payment Selection and before running Payment Creation, you can click the Include button to include the scheduled payment in the current pay cycle and take the discount.

See Also

Handling Potential Lost Discounts

Understanding Alerts

Viewing Withholding Alerts

Access the Withholding Exception page.

Note. Scheduled payments with withholding exceptions are automatically placed on hold. To make a payment with withholding exceptions available for pay cycle processing, you must modify the voucher or the withholding setup, take the scheduled payment off of hold, and run the payment in a new pay cycle.

See Also

Processing Withholding in Payables

Viewing Pay Cycle Errors

Access the Pay Cycle Errors page.

Search Criteria

Search Results

The search results grid displays the error type for each error, along with the source of the error (such as voucher entry), the advice ID and advice sequence (which are identical to the voucher ID and payment count), key fields, and, in the Message Text field, a description of the error.

See Also

Pay Cycle Processing using the Financial Gateway

(USF) Processing Payables for U.S. Federal Agencies

Viewing Bank Replacement Exceptions

Access the Bank Replacement Exceptions - Schedule Exceptions and Bank Replacement Exceptions - Payment Exceptions pages.

Schedule exceptions occur during the Payment Selection process, and payment exceptions occur during the Payment Creation process. Schedule exceptions occur only if your bank replacement rule consists of the option to replace all bank accounts in the pay cycle.

Note. Scheduled payments with bank replacement exceptions are dropped from the pay cycle and revert to their original bank account, payment method, and currency upon completion of the pay cycle. They remain available in their original state for future pay cycles.

Viewing Schedule Exceptions

Viewing Payment Exceptions

See Also

Defining Bank Replacement Rules

Reviewing Draft Payments

This section discusses how to:

• Approve staged draft payments.

• View details about draft payments.

• View details about draft vouchers.

See Also

Processing Drafts

Pages Used to Review Draft Payments

Approving Staged Drafts

Access the Draft Staging Approval page.

Note. You must either approve or reject draft payments before you run the Payment Creation process. However, approving or rejecting payments has no effect on the draft payment's status. If you selected the Preapprove option on the Preferences page of the Payment Selection Criteria component, then the draft payment status is changed to Approved. If you did not select this option, the drafts you approve from this page have a draft status of Created.

Main Information Tab

Additional Information Tab

Additional Page Elements

Viewing Details About Draft Payments

Access the Draft Inquire page.

Viewing Details About Draft Vouchers

Access the Draft Inquire (Voucher) page.

Viewing the Trial Register

This section discusses how to run and use the Trial Register report.

Pages Used to View the Trial Register

Using a Trial Register

Access the Trial Register page and run the Trial Register report.

After viewing the Trial Register report, you have two options:

• Print it out for your records.

• Close it and return to the Pay Cycle Manager page to proceed with check printing.

If you find discover an error in the register:

1. Reset the pay cycle.

2. Rectify the problem in the Payment Selection Criteria component.

See Also

Running and Managing Pay Cycles

Establishing Pay Cycles

Approving the Pay Cycle

This section discusses how to approve the pay cycle.

If you have selected user approval on the Payment Selection Criteria - Preferences page, then your pay cycles must be approved after you have completed payment creation and before you run your output processes.

Note. Payments for pay cycles that require user approval are not eligible for posting until the pay cycle has been approved.

Note. (USF) U.S. federal agencies use payment schedule certification rather than approval. You certify payment schedules after payment selection and before payment creation.

See Also

Certifying Federal Payment Schedules

Pages Used to Approve the Pay Cycle

Approving the Pay Cycle

Access the Pay Cycle Approval page.

Pay Cycle/Payments/Drafts

Pay Cycle Results

The grid displays a row of data for each output process that must be run to generate payment files and negotiable documents. For EFT payments, as all payments regardless of bank account run as one output process, only one EFT row can appear. For checks, advices, positive payment files, and file copies, each bank account and payment method combination runs as a separate output process. This means multiple check rows, positive payment rows, and so forth, can appear in the grid.

See Also

Running and Managing Pay Cycles

Restarting Pay Cycles and Recreating Checks

Verifying Payment References

This section discusses how to:

• Confirm payment references.

• Unconfirm payment references.

See Also

Defining Payment Methods

Using Express Payments

Understanding Payment Reference Verification

When you use preprinted stationery, use the Payment Reference page to verify that the system is assigning the correct check numbers. The system assigns the check numbers, based on the last check number used, so you might need to verify that the system is using the correct number. If it isn't, then you might need to change the payment reference number to match the number used on your pre-printed form.

Note. In order to use payment reference confirmation for a bank account, you must select the Confirm Numbers option on the External Accounts - Payment Methods page

Note. You cannot use the Confirm Payment References feature with Express Payments. The Confirm Payment References feature can only be used with regular pay cycle payments.

Pages Used to Verify Payment References

Confirming Payment References

Access the Reference Confirmation - Payment Reference page.

Search Criteria

Enter your search criteria and click search to view payment references. Bank setID, bank code, and bank account are required fields.

Actions

Search Results

This grid displays the payment reference, payee name, payment amount, payment date, and pay cycle status of each payment that meets your selection criteria.

Occasionally you might want to confirm individual reference numbers one at a time. Do this by selecting the appropriate Confirm boxes for each payment reference and then saving the page.

Unconfirming Payment References

Access the Reference Unconfirmation - Payment Reference page.

This page is identical to the Reference Confirmation - Payment Reference page, except that it enables you to unconfirm payments you have already confirmed. There are two ways to unconfirm payment references:

• Clear the check box for each payment you want to unconfirm and save the page.

• Click the Unconfirm All button to clear all of the payments on the page.

Producing Manual Positive Payment Files

This section discusses how to manually produce a positive payment file.

Understanding Manual Positive Payment Files Production

If a payment in your pay cycle is paid from a bank account that requires positive payment files, you will see a positive payment output process row for that bank account on the Pay Cycle Manager page after you run Payment Creation for that pay cycle. All you need to do is run the positive payment output process to produce your positive payment file.

Occasionally you may want to produce a positive payment file outside of the normal pay cycle process, such as when you've created manual payments that you want to appear in the positive payment file. In those cases, you use the Manual Positive Payment page to initiate the production of a positive payment file.

Page Used to Manually Produce a Positive Payment File

Producing Positive Payment Files

Access the Manual Positive Payment page.

Specify the bank setID, bank code, and bank account for which want to produce the positive payment file. In addition, specify the following:

Select one of the following processing options:

Click the Process button to create the positive payment file. This transfers you to the Pay Cycle Manager page, where you complete the positive payment file output process.

See Also

Running and Managing Pay Cycles

Defining Payment Methods

Restarting Pay Cycles and Recreating Checks

This section provides an overview of restarting a pay cycle and discusses how to recreate and reprint checks.

Understanding Pay Cycle Restart

When you do a restart for the pay cycle, the system assigns the name for the new pay cycle based on the following logic:

• The name format is RSTRT#, where # is a number from 1 to 9.

• If it is a restart of the original pay cycle, the system scans pay cycles RSTRT1 through RSTRT9 and assigns the first one that it finds unused or with a status of Completed. For example, the restart of paycycle MTHLY is any of RSTRT1 through RSTRT9.

• If this is a subsequent attempt at restarting, the system assigns the same pay cycle name it did for the first restart instance and increases the pay cycle sequence number by one. For example, the restart for pay cycle RSTRT3 with pay cycle sequence number 1 is pay cycle RSTRT3 with sequence number 2.

Note. There can be only nine restarted pay cycles running at any given time. You will be unsuccessful in any attempt to restart another pay cycle after there are already nine restarted pay cycles with a status other than Completed.

Note. You cannot restart the original pay cycle more than once for the same set of payment reference numbers, whether or not you choose to recreate the checks using new reference numbers.

Page Used to Recreate Checks

Recreating Checks

Access the Recreate Checks page.

Pay Cycle and Seq Num	Enter the pay cycle and pay cycle sequence number. Every time you run a given pay cycle, the Pay Cycle process increments the sequence number. If you transfer to this page from the Pay Cycle Manager using the Recreate button, the Pay Cycle field is populated with the current pay cycle. The sets of payments represented by the pay cycle and pay cycle sequence number appear in the unlabeled grid below.
Select	Selecting this check box for a row of printed payments makes the Check Reprint Parameters group box available for entry.
Payment Method	Displays the available payment methods, which are: CHK (check): You can recreate a check using the same reference number or a new reference number. BOO (customer-initiated draft): You can only reprint a customer-initiated draft using the same reference number.
Form ID	Displays the form ID used for the printing format.
First Payment	Displays the first payment reference number in the set of payments.
Last Payment	Displays the last payment reference number in the set of payments.

Check Reprint Parameters

Note. If you are using preprinted check forms, you must restart the printing and then, after the forms are printed, transfer to the Payment Reference page to update the system-assigned reference numbers to match those of the payment forms.

See Also

Setting Up Payment Formats and Payment Forms

Running the Pay Cycle Job

This section discusses how to run the Pay Cycle job (APPCJOB), which enables you to run the pay cycle from Payment Selection through the output processes without user intervention.

Page Used to Run the Pay Cycle Job

Running the Pay Cycle Job

To Run a Pay Cycle job:

1. When setting up the payment selection criteria for the pay cycle in the Payment Selection Criteria component, select an Approval value of None.

   To process a pay cycle using the Pay Cycle job, the status of the pay cycle must be New, Reset, No Work, or Completed. If you select the Automatic Increment Dates option for the pay cycle in the Payment Selection Criteria component, you avoid having to increment the dates for a pay cycle before running the job.

2. Access the Pay Cycle Job Request page and enter the required information:

   1. Enter a Pay Cycle ID (created in Payment Selection Criteria component).

   2. Enter an Output Server Name (server name defaults from User Preferences page).

   3. Enter an Output Destination.

      This should be a valid directory path. A meta string (such as %%OutputDirectory%%) is not permitted. You must specify a full directory path with a backslash at the end (for example: C:\TEMP\).

3. Click the Submit Job button to initiate processing.

4. Once the process is complete (the Job status is Processed), review all the output files to ensure that they were generated correctly.

   The Pay Cycle job produces only outputs to files; any files that require printing must be printed independently after the job is complete.

5. If the Job status is No success, view the pay cycle using the Pay Cycle Manager page for more details.

6. When the Job status is Processed, click Finalize Job.

   When you press Finalize, the system enables the Auto Increment flag and increments the date range accordingly. The pay cycle advances to N (new) status and you cannot reset it.

   Note. We recommend that you use the Pay Cycle Manager page to confirm that all output processes are complete before clicking the Finalize Job button.

Note. We do not recommend that you create a run control for the Pay Cycle job to run on a recurring basis without any oversight, since you must return to the Pay Cycle Job Request page once you've submitted the job in order to finalize the pay cycle.

See Also

Setting Pay Cycle Preferences

Running and Managing Pay Cycles