Processing Payments for Payables Leases

This chapter provides an overview of processing payments for payables leases and discusses how to:

• Run the transaction generator.

• Manage transactions for payment processing.

• Interface transactions to payables.

• View pending lease payables (using the Rent Roll report).

Understanding Processing Payments for Payables Leases

Real Estate Management provides a facility to manage the lifecycle of a lease. During the lease lifecycle, various payable items are generated. These items are submitted to the landlord for payment. To generate payments for these expenses, Real Estate Management utilizes the transaction generator, transaction queue manager, and the interface to AP/Billing to automatically generate rent and other related expense payments from a lease directly into the Payables system with the appropriate tax and accounting information.

The high-level business process flow for processing payments for payables leases consists of these steps:

1. Create payables leases (including all general and financial terms and conditions).

2. Activate payables leases.

3. Run the Manage Transaction Generator process.

4. Review transactions for processing in the transaction queue.

5. Add adhoc transactions, as required (optional).

6. Approve transactions for processing.

   This process is optional. You can set up the Auto Approve option at the business unit for recurring items.

7. Run the Manage Transaction Interface to AP/Billing process.

8. View pending lease payables.

Before you can generate a payment, you must first create a payables lease, define the amount and frequency for each recurring payable term, and activate the lease. Upon activation, you run the transaction generator to load the payables items into the transaction queue. You can review the transactions in the transaction queue manager to ensure that the recurring payment schedules are correct. If the status is Pending, you must approve each transaction. If the Auto Approveoption is selected in the business unit setup, the system automatically sets the transactions to Approved. All transactions that are in Approved status are processed when you run the Manage Interface to AP/Billing process.

Note. If you need to review all transactions prior to processing, it is recommended that you do not turn on Auto Approve option for Payables at the business unit level.

The Real Estate Management system transfers the payable items to the Payables application to generate the vouchers and payments. When you launch the Manage Interface to AP/Billing process, it selects all the eligible transactions from the Transaction Queue and passes them to the Payables voucher staging tables. The Payables application processes will create vouchers from the transactions that are loaded in the staging table, schedule the vouchers for payment, issue the payments, and post accounting entries to the general ledger.

Prerequisites

You must establish at least one active payables lease before generating payable items for payment.

See Understanding Leases.

Common Elements Used in This Chapter

Working with the Transaction Generator

This section provides an overview of the transaction generator and discusses how to run the transaction generator.

Understanding the Transaction Generator

The Transaction Generator process (RUN_RE_GENTRANS) generates transactions into the transaction queue manager by monitoring the transaction schedule and processing transactions into the queue when the due date is reached, less the processing lead time that is defined in Real Estate Management business unit setup. Use the transaction queue manager to manage the financial transactions that are created by the transaction generator, as well as the manual adhoc transaction entries that are entered directly in the queue.

When you run the transaction generator, the process picks up all recurring items that are due within a leadtime that is defined for the Real Estate business unit. Note that two different lead times are defined—one for receivables leases and one for payables leases. You also use the transaction generator to manage automatic lease expiration for leases that are due to expire. When the transaction generator identifies a row that is ready for processing, the system verifies the accuracy of the transaction amounts and modifies the transaction as needed. For example, if a base rent has an indexed escalation and the new index value goes into effect, the transaction schedule amount might be out of date. When the transaction generator picks up this row, the system recalculates the amount, revises the schedule, and inserts the modified transaction into the queue for further processing.

Manage Transaction Generator processes records in these transaction tables:

• RE_LS_TXN — Lease Transaction

  Contains the recurring and non recurring lease transactions.

• RE_LS_TXN_DTL — Lease Transaction Detail

  Contains the details such as amount per sales categories.

• RE_LS_TXN_NOTE — Lease Transaction Note

  Contains the Hold, Un-hold, and Cancel history.

• RE_LS_TXN_ERROR — Lease Transaction Error

  Contains the interface error description.

• RE_LS_TRM_SCHED — Lease Term Schedule

  Contains the financial terms schedules.

Typically, you run the Manage Transaction Generator as a scheduled process. You can run the process automatically on a recurring basis or as needed. For efficient and timely processing of any outstanding transactions, it is recommended that you set up this process to run on a nightly recurring basis. Depending on the volume of transactions that are processed within your organization, you can set up this process to run more frequently, but once every day is recommended . You can also initiate this process at any time in addition to the normal recurring schedule.

Managing Transactions for Payment Processing

This section provides an overview of managing transactions and discusses how to manage transactions for payment processing.

Understanding Payment Processing

You use the transaction queue manager to manage the recurring transactions that are created by the transaction generator or by using adhoc entries. The transaction queue manager enables you to approve, hold, un-hold, and cancel transactions in the queue. If the Auto Approveoption is turned on at the business unit, all recurring transactions are automatically set to Approved status when the transaction generator places them into the queue. You can retain an approved transaction from further processing by selecting the transaction and clicking the Hold button; thus putting transaction on hold. When you are ready to process the transaction, you can select it again and click the Un-Hold button. If a lease is in dispute and the status is set to Dispute, the system sets the associated transactions on hold. Once the dispute is resolved, the transactions remain on hold until you manually set the transactions for that lease back to Approved status for further processing.

You can also cancel a transaction. Once you have done so, no further processing occurs and you cannot reinitiate processing for that transaction in the future. Cancelling a recurring transaction does not cause the transaction generator to recreate a new recurring row. But if you cancel a row that came to the transaction queue from the security deposit processing or on one of the processing worksheets, such as a sales report or operating expense reconciliation or audit, the system reopens that worksheet so it can be revised and reissued.

You can create manual transactions for one-time charges such as: rekeying locks in a building, carpet cleaning, broken window repairs, and other charges that are not included in the lease. After creating the manual transactions, select the transaction and click the Approve button for processing. Manual transactions are displayed as Manual Fee under Transaction Groups and are set to Pending status. To view details of each transaction, click the link under the Transaction Groupcolumn.

The transaction queue is the final point in Real Estate Management that any payables transaction can be processed, modified, cancelled, and so on. This component serves as a workspace for any pending transactions and enables you to add transactions as necessary, such as holding or cancelling transactions. It also serves as a historical log of past transactions, with links to various subsystems for further research and status verification.

Prerequisites

Before you can select recurring transactions for payment processing, you must create and activate payables leases and run the Manage Transaction Generator process.

Pages Used to Manage Transactions for Payment Processing

Selecting and Approving Transactions for Payment Processing

Access the Payment Transactions page.

Create Manual Payment Transaction	Click the button to create adhoc transactions for payment. Manual payment transactions can be one-time miscellaneous expense payments to the landlord for minor repair costs, rekeying of locks, or transactions that are not included as part of the recurring terms.
Approve for Payables	Click the button to approve the selected transactions for payment. If you selected the Auto-Approveoption when you established your business unit, the system automatically approves all transactions in the transaction queue.
Hold	Click the button to hold selected transactions from further processing. Note. A lease that is put on hold due to a dispute automatically puts the pending and approved transactions for that lease on hold status until the dispute is resolved. Once the dispute is resolved, you need to manually change the transaction status in the transaction queue back to approved status. See Understanding Leases.
UnHold	Click the button to un-hold transactions that were previously on hold from further processing. Note. A lease that is set at the hold status due to a dispute automatically puts the pending and approved transactions for that lease on hold until the dispute is resolved. After the dispute is resolved, you must manually change the transaction status in the transaction queue back to approved.
Cancel	Click the button to cancel the selected transaction. Note. Once a recurring transaction is cancelled, you must create a new manual transaction if one is required. The system does not regenerate a new recurring transaction.

Payment Transactions - Transactions tab

Payment Transactions - Lease Information tab

The Lease Information tab displays the lease number, lease name, and region information associated to that transaction.

Payment Transactions - Status Details tab

Running Manage Interface to AP/Billing

This section provides an overview of the Manage Interface to AP/Billing process.

Understanding the Manage Interface to AP/Billing Process

Real Estate Management uses existing Payables functionality to generate vouchers and payments to the landlords. When you run the Manage Interface to AP/Billing process, the system sends approved Real Estate Management payment information to the Payables Voucher Build/Edit staging table. Once the information is sent, the Payables application continues with the process flow by generating the vouchers and payments to the landlord and also generating the appropriate accounting information for posting to the general ledger.

The Manage Interface to AP/Billing process populates four tables:

• Voucher Headers (VCHR_HDR_STG)

• Voucher Lines (VCHR_LINE_STG)

• Voucher Line Distributions (VCHR_DIST_STG)

• Voucher Payments (VCHR_PYMT_STG)

To populate these tables, this process groups the transaction details by each lease and inserts a voucher header for each lease. A voucher line is created for every transaction detail for that lease and the system inserts the distribution lines that correspond to those details. The distribution detail defaults from the Contract Accounting Rules process that uses the LA Accounting Rules setup and the transaction detail information, such as the transaction routing code.

The transaction routing code that is associated with a transaction detail also provides processing information that relates to withholding tax and sales and use taxes. Since the AP Voucher Build/Edit populates most of the information that is not provided by the interface, it is recommended that you set up the transaction routing codes using the Default option.

For example, if a Payables business unit and vendor are set up to use withholding, the transaction routing code Withholding is set to let the Payables system provide the applicable withholding code. The default can be set to No to avoid withholding on a specific transaction detail that is not subject to withholding. Setting a transaction routing code Withholding to Yes for sending transactions to a Payables business unit that is not set to collect withholding tax, or for a vendor not subjected to withholding tax, places the generated voucher in Error/Recycle state as the necessary additional withholding information is not defaulted.

To create the vouchers in Payables for the Real Estate Management transactions, Payables runs the AP Voucher Build/Edit process, which takes the data from the staging tables after they are populated. This process uses the information provided in the tables, populates values for fields that were not populated, and verifies the integrity of the generated voucher. If any issues are found, the voucher is set in error and can be reviewed online or recycled in batch. The voucher is not available for further processing until all errors are corrected.

Note. You can also use the Manage Interface to AP/Billing process to generate invoices to tenants for receivables leases. When generating the process, consider setting up separate run control IDs for generating Billing and Payables transactions. If you use only one run control ID, the system generates all transactions for both invoices and payments.

Prerequisites

Before you run the Manage Interface to AP/Billing process, verify that transactions in the transaction queue are set to anApproved status.

Page Used to Manage Interfaces to AP/Billing

Managing Interface to AP/Billing

Access the Manage Interface to AP/Billing page.

Business Unit	Enter a business unit to generate transactions that are specific to that business unit.
Lease Number	Enter a lease number to generate transactions for that lease. The business unit must be entered before selecting the lease number.

Interface Selection

Viewing Pending Lease Payables

This section discusses how to view pending lease payables (also commonly referred to as the rent roll report).

Real Estate Management enables you to view the list of pending lease payables. This interactive inquiry enables you to filter the criteria and view all the active leases with pending payments and their schedules.

Pages Used to View Pending Lease Payables

Inquire Pending Lease Payables

Access the Pending Lease Payables page.

Due Date From: and To:	Select the date range for pending transactions that are scheduled within that range.
Lease Administrator	Select to view pending transaction schedules that are associated with that lease administrator.
Portfolio Manager	Select to view pending transaction schedules that are associated with that portfolio manager.

Pending Lease Payables