Lockbox Processing

In some cases, carriers deposit payments directly to a bank, and the bank sends payment information to the newspaper. The information is then read by Circulation, and the payments are applied to account balances. This is known as lockbox processing. The format of the lockbox file is defined in File Map.

To perform lockbox processing:

1. Circulation reads payment data from the file /dti/exchange/cm/lockbox.d. You must therefore place the payment information from the bank into this file.

2. Select Lockbox Processing from the Account Payments menu to display the Account Lockbox Processing window.

   
3. Click Add and complete the following fields.

   Field	Type	What to enter
   COMPANY	setup	Enter the company for these payments.
   READ OPTION	predefined	Indicate whether to edit or commit this information. Select commit to create payment records. Select edit to view a report showing the number of records processed (and errors)—you must then run Lockbox Processing again and set this field to commit.
   CASH BATCH	open (10)	Enter a batch ID for these payments.
   DESCRIPTION	open (30)	Enter a description of this batch.
   SPLIT BY TYPE	yes/no	Select this checkbox if you want to separate payments into two different batches: a cash batch and a credit card batch.
   CC BATCH	open (10)	Enter a batch ID for the credit card payments. Be sure it does not match the ID entered in Cash Batch.
   DESCRIPTION	open (30)	Enter a description of the credit card batch.
   BANK	setup	Enter the ID of the bank where payments were deposited.
   APPLY METHOD	predefined	Indicate how the payments should be applied: automatic, invoice, or none.
   FILE FORMAT	setup	Select the file map you want to use for these payments.
   BPAY FILE	yes/no	Indicate if this file is from the BPay form of online banking.
   FILE NAME	open (30)	Enter the name of the input file.

4. Click OK and then Continue to process the lockbox payments. A suspended but applied batch of account payments is created.

5. The Account Lockbox Processing report will be created, listing the lockbox payments that were processed.

6. To validate entries, print the Payment Journal before accepting these payments.

7. Restart this suspended batch of payments by selecting Payment Entry and entering the batch ID and default information. If you make any changes to the batch, the changes will reapply when you accept them.