DMBM205100 - Payment processing and accounting: Payments banked in offices with Bank Lodgement Facility: Payments for SAFE

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The offices listed below are able to receive and bank payments and input the details direct to the SAFE system.

The Banking Operation teams in Cumbernauld and Shipley will direct unmatched/unidentified payments to OAS. Where a payment is subsequently identified as being proper to a Customer Account Record (CAR) in SAFE, Banking Operations staff will use the Payment Lot functionality to allocate the payment to that record. (See DMBM210510)

Details of payments that are banked outside of Cumbernauld and Shipley for SAFE Customer Account Records (CARs) are notified to the SAFE system using the Post Local Payment function. This is a SAFE function available to nominated users and follows the established RFOC/RBOC business process.

At the start of each on-line day the Aspire Support team will release Payment Lots to the appropriate offices. This will include the SAFE Support teams at Cumbernauld and Shipley who will use a version of the Payment Lot functionality to transfer payments from the clerical Overpayments Register (Book 19) to SAFE. The number of Payment Lots available to each office is as follows;

Office Name	Office Numeral	Number of Payment Lots	Number of Returned Payment Lots
Finance Worthing	856	10	5
EIS Worthing	880	10	5
EIS Edinburgh	623	10	5
Newcastle Banking Unit	859	10	5
SAFE Team Cumbernauld	258	20	0
SAFE Team Shipley	259	20	0
Banking Ops Cumbernauld	900	99	0
Banking Ops Shipley	901	99	0

 

If at the start of the on-line day the Payment Lot functionality is not available refer to the National Help Desk.

 

Each day local management allocates a Payment Lot to each member of their team inputting payments to SAFE that day. Payment Lots for each office are uniquely identified and consecutively numbered. In those offices where the same staff regularly input payments to SAFE a Payment Lot can be assigned to an individual for example A N Other will always select Payment Lot number 1 for their office.

The format of the Payment Lot ID is PXXZZYYMMDD where:

P = is always present to indicate Payment Lot

XX = is a two character identifier for the Office numeral

ZZ = is the consecutive number of the Payment Lot for the office

YY = is the current year

MM = is the current month

DD = is today’s date.

Inclusion of the date in a reversed format provides a unique identifier for every payment lot

The following table provides details of the Office ID and the Payment Lots allocated to each office.

Office Name	Office ID	Range of Payment Lots
Finance Worthing	03	01-10
EIS Worthing	05	01-10
Newcastle Banking Unit	04	01-10
SAFE Team Cumbernauld	02	01-20
SAFE Team Shipley	01	01-20
Banking Ops Cumbernauld	G2	01-99
Banking Ops Shipley	S2	01-99

A user selects the Payment Lot allocated to them by their manager by accessing the function Post Local Payment (local banking). To transfer a payment to SAFE, the following details are input to the Payment Lot.

• amount
• Selection Category (I or R) - to indicate a SAFE customer (I) or charge reference (R)
• Charge reference (14 characters) or customer reference (15 characters)
• Payment Type - possible values BAC, BGP, BGT, BLP, CHP, DCP, DDP, NGB, NGE, NGP, PYM or a Cheque number in the range of 000000-999999.
• Optional Free Text field
• Effective Date of Payment (EDP).

Validation checks are made against the data input to ensure that a charge record exists. An amount greater than the outstanding charge will be accepted and any excess will be allocated to the Unallocated Payment (suspense account).

Once the first entry has been made in the Payment Lot there are several options for working the Lot during the course of the on-line day. Typically items will continue to be added to the Payment Lot during the day. It is possible to save the Lot, for example when going to lunch, re-opening and adding as required.

While the Payment Lot is open, any items already listed may be amended or deleted. An automatic process at the end of the on-line day posts the payments. These will appear on the Customer Records the next on-line day. If items have been entered into a Lot which is not saved at the end of the on-line day the payments are not posted and will have to be re-input.

Payments input to SAFE by local offices are recognised on the CARs by a unique number made up from the office numeral and the date of the processing.

During the course of the day Payment Lots may be posted by any of the offices identified above. SAFE identifies the originating office and creates a Reconciliation Report for each office. The office uses this information, with output from the IRIS and BROCS payment transfer functions, to complete the daily reconciliation.