Payments Lockbox

A lockbox is a service provided by some banks to their business customers who receive a high volume of payments by check. The payments can be sent to an address at the bank, and the bank will deposit the checks in to the customer's account and then send the customer a file detailing all the payments received. Opentaps can then read such a file and create corresponding payments and apply them to your customers' invoices.

IMPORTANT: In most cases, the banks will send the payments in a text file format, and the format may vary slightly from bank to bank.

Lockbox File Format

The lockbox file is a fixed field flat file. The first character of each line describes what kind of data is contained in that line. For our purposes, we can consider the lockbox filed to be divided into several batches, with each batch beginning with a line which starts with a "5" and ending with a line which starts with a "7". Within each batch, each payment is on a line which starts with a "6", and each payment can be allocated to several customer invoices on lines which begin with a "4". There are additional fields in most of these lines, but they are not used except for the ones listed below.

Start of Batch

These are lines starting with a "5" and are mapped to the opentaps LockboxBatch entity. The following fields are used:

Field Name	Start	End	Length	Example Value
Record type	1	1	1	5
Batch number	2	4	3	014

Payment Items

These are lines starting with a "6" and are mapped to the opentaps LockboxBatchItem entity. The following fields are used:

Field Name	Start	End	Length	Example Value
Record type	1	1	1	6
Batch number	2	4	3	014
Item number	5	7	3	001
Current date	15	20	6	081118
Check amount	41	50	10	0000027994
Check number	69	80	12	000000008635

The check number is expressed in cents, so 27994 is $279.94.

Payment Item Details

These are lines starting with a "4" and are mapped to the opentaps LockboxBatchItemDetail entity. These lines typically described how the payment items from above are to be applied to customers and their invoices. The following fields are used:

Field Name	Start	End	Length	Example Value
Record type	1	1	1	4
Batch number	2	4	3	014
Item number	5	7	3	001
Detail number	9	10	2	01
Invoice number	11	20	10	0000556632
Invoice amount	21	30	10	27994
Customer number	61	70	10	0000012943

As with the payment items from above, the invoice amount is expressed in sense, so 27994 is $279.94.

End of Batch These are lines starting with a "7" and are also mapped to the opentaps LockboxBatch entity. They follow at the bottom of all the payment items and payment item details and wrap up a batch, matching the lines which start with a "5". The following fields are used:

Field Name	Start	End	Length	Example Value
Record type	1	1	1	7
Batch count	21	23	4	064
Batch amount	24	33	10	0001023877

The batch amount is also in cents, so the amount above his $10,238.77.

Working with Lockboxes

Go to the Manage Lockbox Batches in Financials to upload your lockbox file. You should then see it in the list of lockbox batches which are available for processing. Click on one of them to go to the Lockbox Batch Details, where you can review the individual payments and their allocations to the invoices. You can change the way the payments are allocated, but you cannot modify the original data from the lockbox file. After all the lockbox payments are properly processed, the lockbox batch will be marked as completed.