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How to Process Credit Cards/ACH

This guide will assist you with the set-up and processing of credit card and ACH payment requests.

Overview 
ALMSys allows you to submit payment origination data from credit cards, checking accounts, and saving accounts. (The term "ACH" stands for "Automated Clearing House" and refers to checking and savings accounts.) 

Getting Started
Originations may be done through TransFirst ePayment Services, which will process ACH and credit card transactions in the U.S. only. Originations may also be done through your bank, but only if they accept one of the interface types listed below. TransFirst is the only interface in ALMSys that accepts credit cards. All others are ACH only.

Credit Card/ACH interface set-ups are performed through the Location Settings screen.

TransFirst
Currently, you must be a U. S. customer to use TransFirst's services. You may either contact them directly, or have ALMSys Support contact them for you. You must tell TransFirst that you are going to transmit batches through the ALMSys software, from ALMSys, Inc. If you do not tell them this, they may attempt to push or sell you something that will not work with ALMSys.

There are three items that ALMSys needs from TransFirst in order to get started:
  • Sender Identifier. This is a six-digit number that represents your overall account number with TransFirst.
  • Credit Card Account Number. This is an eight-digit number that will be used to process credit card transactions. If you will not be accepting credit cards, then you do not need this account number.
  • ACH Account Number. This is an eight-digit number that will be used to process ACH transactions. If you will not be accepting checking or savings accounts, then you do not need this account number.

    NACHA
    This style file is regulated by www.nacha.org. If your financial institution accepts this type of file, then you must sign up through your financial institution in order to submit these files for processing.

    CIBC
    This is a Canadian-only interface that makes use of CIBC's "CIBC80" ACH format.

    RBC
    This is a Canadian-only interface that makes use of RBC's "RBC152" ACH format.

    Scotiabank
    This is a Canadian-only interface that makes use of Scotiabank's "CPA005 / 1464" ACH format.

    ALMSys Security
    Please make sure that you have set up the security necessary for credit card/ACH processing. Specifically, you should have:

    Overall security page
  • Process Credit Cards/ACH set to Yes

    Payment page
  • Credit Card Screen set to Yes

    Individual Lease Setup
    Each account that you wish to charge needs to be set up on the Payment - Credit Card/ACH screen. It is highly recommended that you have a signed document from the customer which authorizes charging their account.

    Once the account information has been entered and saved, set up the deal for recurring payments on the Payment - Recurring screen. Please do not attempt to split their payment into multiple pieces. Credit card/ACH payment requests will only be done for full periodic payments only.

    On each screen, please make sure you mark it "Active."

    Processing
    Processing is done in batches. Each batch consists of active deals with active credit card/ACH accounts. Accounts may be added one-by-one from the Credit Card/ACH screen, or by mass methods in the Credit Card/ACH Batch Details screen.

    New batches may be created on the Credit Card/ACH screen or on the Credit Card/ACH Processing screen. When a new batch is created, it is placed in an "open" status. This allows accounts to be added and removed from the batch as desired. You may have as many open batches as desired, but more than two at a time may become confusing. (For example, you may want one batch for your weekly mass processing and another for individual, over-the-counter requests.)

    When your batch is ready, your should check it for errors. No further processing will be done until all perceived errors have been corrected. The remaining processing steps are to export the batch for upload, upload the batch, download the results, receive the results into the batch, post payments for the batch, delete the batch, and clean up the imported/exported files. All of these steps are explained in detail in the help topic for the Credit Card/ACH Batch Details screen.

    Leveraged Financing Batches
    A special batch may be created that will allow you to pay the leveraged financing banks for the payments posted on a specific date. It does not matter where the payments came from; all payments received for leases with leveraged financing established may be included.

    For this special batch, you will retrieve all payments posted for a specific date, and then submit a credit batch that will take the leveraged financing payment and send it via ACH to the leveraged financing bank.

    You must establish a transit routing number and an account number for the bank in Leveraged Financing Bank maintenance.

    Batch processing is identical to what has been described in "Processing" above. See Credit Card/ACH Batch Details for more information.