Using ACH in FE with approval workflow

Jill Knowland
Jill Knowland
Second Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1
in Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT® General Discussions

Hi all,

I wonder if it's possible to do the following in FEnxt:

  1. Utilize the ACH payment type that would generate a payment file to our bank. It is getting harder to use paper checks that get lost in the mail so often, and I don't like going directly through our bank and then recording a “manual” payment on the vendor invoice in A/P. There must be a way to generate payments from FEnxt and send a file directly to our bank for payment.
  2. Can this process include a workflow for payment approvals in AP? I also am worried about only the A/P person being in charge of sending payments without a second approval. Currently, with printed checks we have a check signer and a second signer over $2500. I need that same level of control on ACH payments.

Any help or suggestions are appreciated!

Jill

Comments

  • Kevin Brazell
    Kevin Brazell Blackbaud Employee
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply Name Dropper

    @Jill Knowland
    1. How to configure EFT and pay vendors by ACH You sitll have to take the actual ACH file and upload it but FENXT Will make the files. This is from the DB view perspective but most steps are same in FENXT.

    2. Not at the signature level since EFT's don't use signatures. Best you can do is A. in payables make sure the business rule for requiring invoices to be approved before they can be posted or paid. Then you'd need to look at roles and security rights to confirm who can or can't approve the invoices. Now this would affect any / all invoices not just ones for EFT B. If you want a full on approval process, if you have Expense Management, you can use approval rules and that does allow dollar thresholds on the approval rule. You could then require any invoice that would be paid by EFT, to have users enter it there vs directly in AP ( workflow practice ).

  • Nikki Baldwin
    Nikki Baldwin Blackbaud Employee
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 4 Name Dropper Participant

    @Jill Knowland, In addition to what Kevin shared, you can also sign up for the included feature of Payment Assistant, which has tiered approvals coming out very soon. This would allow for you to have control over your vendor payments' approval, both at the invoice and payment approval level, but allows for us to do the actual payment processing/delivery to your vendors via the payment method they choose including virtual card payments, ACH, and paper checks. You can ask for more information via this interest form to see how you can start saving time and money in your AP payment processing.

  • Lara Woytowich
    Lara Woytowich
    Seventh Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1 Loyalty Badge

    @Jill Knowland
    Kevin is correct in saying that processing EFTs will just create an ACH file that still needs to be imported to your bank. We only have a few people that have the capability to process ACH's in online banking. Currently we only process a couple EFTs, but my AP person creates the file, I import to the bank and print a copy of the ACH, then it is signed off on by a check signer. There is also the option of requiring a second person to approve the ACH after I import to our bank.

  • Mikayla Owens
    Mikayla Owens
    First Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1 2024 Season of Giving

    @Jill Knowland Agree with everything mentioned, we are currently using expense management which @Kevin Brazell helped us initiate. We use the setting which requires all invoices to be approved before they can be paid. Once our EFT file is generated by Blackbaud - our AP person has to upload this file to our Truist “managed file transfer site”. Additionally, Truist has a “ACH Fraud Control portal” (separate logins) where an individual must go in and enter the total of the EFT file that was uploaded to the transfer site - if this total doesn't match then Truist will not process the payment. This allows us to have additional layer of control/approval over payments being processed. Hope this helps - Expense management has been working well for us since initiating in Jan25.

Categories