Direct Pay Set Up Overview

This document was developed to describe in general terms the process of Direct Pay Setup. It provides an overview of the settlement negotiating process and the current procedures required to convert settlement payments from an existing payment type to Direct Pay (Click here to learn more about Direct Pay). This article is divided into the following sections:

• Overview
• Scheduling Settlements
• Settlement Payment Decisions
• Forth Reports
• Questions?

Overview

For normal ACH/Check by phone payment types, there are five (5) steps involved in the negotiating process. With Direct Pay, there is no longer a need to call creditors to set up scheduled payments.

🔺For most settlements, please inform your team not to call in payments as they can cause duplicate payments with the creditor.   

Scheduling Settlements

For Direct Pay payments, the information filled out in the Creditor Payee Details section has changed. Once you have selected the payment method under the payment terms as direct pay, the Creditor Payee Details section (left-hand side of the screen) updates with Direct Pay Details.

IMPORTANT: Copy the Loan number/reference number exactly as listed on the settlement letter agreement to the "Creditor Reference #" field to ensure the proper consumer’s account is credited when paid (see the example with the purple arrow above). Do not include the consumer’s name in parenthesis, append the reference field with words like File # or Account#, etc., or shorten the reference number field. Failure to adhere to this process may delay or cause the payment file to fail and require manual intervention.  Payments could be lost and shown as UNPAID.   

IMPORTANT: Double-check that the entries are correct before saving the settlement.

Settlement Payment Decisions

IMPORTANT: Most settlements set up as Direct Pay will no longer be viewable on the Decisions Page.   

Why?   

Forth is now sending funds to creditors based on the process date for certain settlements, eliminating your daily task of approving each settlement payment. Furthermore, settlement payments will be paid only if the consumer has sufficient funds in their special purpose account. Any shortage in funds will result in the transaction remaining in Low Balance status until funds are available or advanced to the client.  

What about low-balance accounts?   How do I advance if the Decisions page is gone?

To help manage this, Forth created two (2) reports that enable you to make advances to address these exceptions.

Forth Reports

1. Uncollected Settlements - lists out all uncollected/unpaid settlements in pending, shipped, or low balance status. (Click here to learn more)
   
   
2. Low Balance Forecast Report - list out all potential low balance accounts up to two (2) weeks out.  Features an advance button to facilitate on-the-fly account adjustments. (Click here to learn more)

At the beginning of each month, some gateway providers will send out their own Uncollected Debt Payments report to you. It is your responsibility to review these reports and manage these missing or late payments directly with the gateway provider.  

All Direct Pay clients are categorized as one of two different types: Common and Multi-Payee. A multi-payee account for a creditor requires a critical decision - what account to select for a particular debt.  The user will know who the original creditor is, or which account to select, based on other information that they have (For example, Patenaude & Felix is based upon the account structure and if it ends with a -0, MCM is based upon if the MCM account starts with a "3" or other combination stated in the instructions.   Moore Law Group is based upon the original creditor (BofA, Chase, etc).

Common is what all remaining Direct Play Clients are labeled as.

Questions?

If you have any questions or need further information, contact us at settlements@setforth.com.

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