Introduction #
Banner’s Accounts Receivable provides the ability to track amounts due the institution within individual accounts. “Account” in this context refers to an entity – person (e.g., student or staff) or non-person (e.g., departmental or third party) – and the transactions incurred by that entity. These transactions are posted in Account Detail, a table accessible to users through these pages:
Account Detail Review TSAAREV | Customer Service Inquiry TSICSRV |
Account Detail TSADETL | Account Detail Query TGIACCD |
When charges or payments are entered to an account, they are reflected immediately in the Account Balance and Amount Due for the account. It is the sum of the Balance of each transaction calculated into these two summary totals. Balance adjustments occur through internal application of a line item transaction with a negative balance to a line item transaction with a positive balance. This is accomplished through Banner’s Application of Payments process, TGRAPPL. Generally, a payment detail code is applied to a charge, but could also be a negative charge (cancellation or reduction) against a charge, or a payment against a negative payment (such as an award reduction). When applied in full, a transaction Balance will be 0.00. TGRAPPL will ignore all zero-balance transactions, processing only those where the Balance is greater or less than 0.00.
The records resulting from either application or unapplication are stored in the Application of Payment table, and may be viewed on the Application of Payment Review page TSIAPPL.
Unapplication? Yes! Accounts Receivable is fluid, ever changing day to day as events that generated each transaction are altered. An add or drop of courses may trigger adjusting entries. Room and board contracts may be changed or voided. A change in a student’s award status may result in disbursement adjustments. A check payment may be returned by the bank. Any of these, and various other reasons, will revise the status of the account, likely resulting in the need to realign payment application. To do this, transactions will need unapplied in order to allow re-application. Unapplication can occur manually throughUnapplication of Payments page TSAUNAP, or automatically in batch by Unapplication of Payments process TGRUNAP.
Given the various requirements that must be met, Banner A/R is designed to allow maximum flexibility in determining which payments apply to which charges, the order in which payments should be used, and the order in which charges should be paid. TGRAPPL consults a variety of factors and follows a Sequence of Application of Payments (list follows), the first of which is Direct Payment. Direct payment overrides all other criteria, such as detail code controls (see page 5, Detail Code Controls for Application of Payments), and TGRAPPL job parameters.
Future-dated transactions will be handled in one of two ways, depending on the status of the Feed Future Effective Transactions check box on the Accounts Receivable Billing Control page TGACTRL. This control has a dual purpose. In relation to Application of Payments process:
- when unchecked (No) – only those transactions that have a current or less than current Effective Date will be applied. Future charges will not be applied until they become effective.
- when checked (Yes) – all outstanding transactions are considered for application, regardless of Effective Date.
Due to the flexibility of controls provided, it is common that transactions may remain unapplied on an account following TGRAPPL. A Pending Roster should be requested each time TGRAPPL is run in batch. It will provide IDs and Names for accounts where a negative-balance transaction won’t apply to positive-balance transactions. Account-by-account analysis may be required to identify action required to realign how transactions within the account are applied.