Utilizing Company Payment Approvals

How to approve one or multiple payments in your portal

What is covered here?

1. What is Payment Approval?
2. Examples of Payment Approval Flow
3. How to sort and organize your Payment Approvals?
4. How to approve one Payment?
5. How to approve multiple Payments?

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What is Payment Approval

Account signers, treasury teams and business owners can set permission levels that require dual person payment approvals for payments within Abaca Online Banking. 

Payment Approval is designed for clients who have other non-signer users on their Abaca Online Banking account. When an organization has multiple users, Abaca provides the functionality to mitigate risk of Payments and fraud in 2 ways: 1) assigning user permissions to initiate Payments for approval and 2) assigning user permissions to those who can approve those Payments. Additionally, signers and owners can set payment limits for individual users based on their expected job functions. 

Lastly, this can be customized based on the different methods of Payments: BillPay (ACH & checks) and wires. 

 

There are 3 key aspects of user permissions that affect Payment Approval

To adjust the user permissions on your account, please reach out to your account specialist.

• BillPay Entry - A User can submit new BillPay entries (ACH & Checks)
  • EntryLimits - How big of a BillPay Payment can they submit?
  • Range = $0 - $450,000 (Wires do not have such limits)
• BillPay Approve - A User can approve new BillPay entries (ACH & Checks)
  • These can only be Signers on the account.
  • ApprovalLimits - How big of a BillPay Payment can they approve?
  • Range = $0 - $450,000
• Wire Access - They can submit or approve wires.

BillPay (ACH & Checks) Approval Conditions

• If someone has only BillPay entry, all Payments will need to be approved by someone with the BillPay Approve access that has an Approval Limit above the specific Payment.
• If someone is a signer (has both BillPay Entry and Approval access), they can send Payments without approval if the Payment is below their ApprovalLimit.

Wire Approval Conditions

• If 1 person has wire access, there is no need for another approval.
• If 2+ people with wire access, it will need approval from the other person within the organization.

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Examples of Payment Approval Flow

We have outlined a few different examples and how the payment approval flow will work.

Example 1 - BillPay Entry BELOW your EntryLimit + Approval BELOW your ApprovalLimit

• If you are the only user on your account, you will have the maximum ApprovalLimits and access for both Entry and Approval.
• You can send Payments without any other approval.
• Payments will not be included within the Payment Approval page.
• The system limit for BillPay is $450,000. 

Example 2 - BillPay Entry BELOW your EntryLimit + Approval ABOVE your ApprovalLimit

BillPay EntryLimit = $300,000 || BillPay ApprovalLimit  = $100,000

• You submit a BillPay of $200,000
• You will submit the Payment but it will need to be approved by someone who can approve at least $200,000.

Example 3 - BillPay Entry ABOVE your limit

• BillPay EntryLimit = $3,500 || BillPay ApprovalLimit  = N/A
• You try to submit a BillPay Entry of $200,000
• You will not be able to submit a Payment above your limit. You will see the below error. The limit shown there is the current user’s BillPay Entry Limit.

• This is the same error message shown if any BillPay Entry attempt is above the system limit of $450,000.

Example 4 - Wire with 1 person with access

• No Payment Approval will be needed given there is only 1 user on the account.
• Wires will be sent out directly to your Vendor.

Example 5 - Wire with 2+ people with access 

• To protect your account, no matter your access Wires will need to be approved by another Wire access user before being processed and sent out to your Vendor.

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How to sort and organize your Payment Approvals?

1. Login into your Abaca Online Banking
2. Go to the “PMT Approval” tab in the left hand menu
3. The Payments are listed by the most recent effective date.  To change how the Payments are sorted, click on one of the column labels. 
   1. For example, to see all the Payments scheduled together for one company click on the label Name and the list will be sorted by vendor name.  

 

How to approve one Payment?

1. Login into your Abaca Online Banking
2. Go to the PMT Approval tab in the left hand menu
3. Find the Payment in question and click the button: Actions
4. You will be prompted with 3 different options. To accept a Payment click: Approve. 
   1. View - You can look at all the details like the invoice linked to the Payment in a new tab within your browser.
   2. Approve - You can accept this Payment and let the funds be transferred.
   3. Delete  - You can remove non-approved Payments from the queue.

5.   Note on approving wires:

1. 1. You will need specific access to approve wires.
   2. If the Payment to approve is a wire, there will be a 2-factor prompt.
   3. All wires have to be approved unless there is only 1 person on your account with wire access.

6.   You will see the approval message in the top right corner

How to approve multiple Payments?

1. Login into your Abaca Online Banking
2. Go to the PMT Approval tab in the left hand menu
3. Find the Payments you would like to approve and click the checkboxes on the left hand side.
4. To approve all selected Payments, click on the button: Approve # Payments:

 

5.   You will see the approval message in the top right corner