ACH Payment Processing
This was a new feature in 2023.5 and It crosses multiple modules, so I am documenting it here in A/R, but will reference it in other related areas of the system.
Depending upon your payment processor, ACH may now be supported for payment processing in Naviga Ad, both for internal users, and for Advertiser Portal Users (Note - Classified Self-Service is still currently credit card only, but may be considered for a future release). The processors which currently support ACH transaction processing with Naviga Pay are Authorize.net, Braintree, ImpressPay (aka FluidPay or AMR), Edgil Payway, and Stripe***.
Important -
When upgrading to this version from a version prior to 2023.5 - and you are using one of the above processors who now allow for ACH - please put in a support ticket to let us know when you are upgrading. There may be a small change we need to make in the back end so that payment processing continues to work without interruption.
When Processing ACH Transactions, we do get an immediate response back that the Routing and Account numbers were valid, but there could be issues downstream that cause the transaction to ultimately be rejected. We do not get an automatic reversal on this from the payment processor, so you will still need to reconcile the deposits with your bank to ensure that the payment ended up posted to your bank account. Similar to a check bouncing - if an ACH gets rejected downstream, the payment will need to be reversed manually by returning the check.
Internal Experience
Process Payment Screen
This screen is displayed in Campaign Payment Entry and A/R Invoice Payments. If ACH is enabled for your bank, you will see the "ACH" option in the dropdown for payment type. The below screen is displayed if the user enters a payment by navigating to any of the following:
A/R module -> Payments -> Pay an Invoice
A/R module -> Payments -> Prepay an Order
Advertising module -> Campaigns -> Edit a Campaign, Invoices & Payments node
ACH will only be displayed if at least one bank is setup to support ACH, and only those banks supporting ACH will be displayed in the bank dropdown. Labels have been changed onscreen to be applicable to both ACH and Credit cards. So "Credit Card to Charge" has been relabeled "Account to Charge." "Card Number" is now "Account Number", etc.
Note - if you do not see ACH as an option in the dropdown, check Accounts Receivable Group Security. There is a setting there to limit the payment types that are available to a user. If you previously set limitations, you will need to also select ACH to allow that to be selected.
If you still do not see ACH as an option, check in bank setup - but only use that flag if you are using one of the above listed processors, and you have enabled ACH with your processor. You wouldn't want users to see ACH in the dropdown if it isn't going to be functional for them.
The popup displayed when user clicks "new" to add a new account will differ slightly depending upon the processor being used, but typically, the Account number, Routing Number, and Account type will be displayed -
This will be saved as an account on file and will behave much like a credit card in that the masked account number can be viewed and selected to be used for transactions.
Auto-Pay on Campaign
Similar function, but slightly different user experience, on the Campaign Header, if there is an account on file, a bank account now can be selected as an AutoPay method from the Auto Pay Dropdown:
The auto pay function is not new, but having Bank Accounts available in that list is new. Previously, only credit cards were in that dropdown. Whatever account is selected in the dropdown will be used to pay the invoice during the invoice creation process.
Auto-Clear Processing
And finally, one additional place that ACH is now supported is in the monthly Auto-Clear processing.
Navigate to Customers -> Advertiser/Agency Maintenance in Advertising Module or Customers -> Name Maintenance in the A/R Module and select the A/R Setup node. The Auto-clear balance dropdown will now contain both card numbers and bank account numbers for selection for the monthly charge.
NOTE: For those who are electing to license Naviga Ad's Variable Pricing by Payment Type module, if you are charging processing fees for Card transactions (or ACH Transactions) the Auto-clear process will now also charge those fees for these transactions.
Special note for Stripe users
Stripe has a slightly different ACH process in that the account must be verified by the account holder prior to using it for the first time. After verification it will work like the other banks in that the user will select the account from the available accounts dropdown and use it to pay for orders or invoices.
When the bank account is first saved, the client, will get this message: This payment has been declined. If this is a new payment method, the payment processor requires that new accounts be verified prior to use. A verification link will be emailed in 24-48 hours along with instructions for verification.
The account will be saved in the system, but it will not be usable until they verify the account. For the verification process, the customer will receive a small deposit and withdrawal to their bank account (one or two cents).
The deposit will look something like this:
Following that deposit, they will get an email (email address is entered along with their account information) with a link and instructions to verify a code that was included on the payment. Once the verification process is complete, the user will be able to come back to the Portal and use their saved account to make payments.
Here is a walk-thru of the step-by-step process for sending a pay link for a campaign, when using Stripe.
The above steps do not including charging transaction fees via the Variable Pricing by Payment Type module (though that workflow is still supported, just not the workflow I used in the Stripe step-by-step tutorial). For other workflows using ACH in the portal see Client Portal Access -> Invoices section.
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