Payment Timing for ACH Expense Reimbursement

When an ACH expense request is entered in LCR, when is the ACH created? After approvals are entered, As soon as the expense is entered? How long does the process take before the members account is credited?

After the 2nd approver reviews and documentation and approves the expense. If the bishop is on the 2nd approver then it does not wait for the bishop's separate approval. From what I've heard from my ward members they get a notification of the transaction within about a day and the money is deposited within about 2 days or so after that.

If the bishop is not the 2nd approver, the ACH deposit still happens after the 2nd approval as eblodd66 noted. In that case, the bishop still must approve the expense, but 2 approvers release it to pay without the bishop's final approval. This is the same as when we printed paper checks - they could be delivered to the member and deposited before the bishop signed the expense summary paperwork.

I am starting to wonder about a possible time lag for EFT reimbursements. I created two EFT expense reimbursements for our YW president on 21 June 2019. It is now 11 July 2019, and those two EFTs are still showing as "Issued". I have not asked her if she has actually seen these deposits in her account. Perhaps there is a problem with her Reimbursement Account.

I called the GSC. They told me these two EFTs have been "received by bank". Since the deposits have not yet been credited, we assume that the member entered the wrong account number as her Reimbursement Account or there may be some other issue with her account that is blocking the EFT deposit. I have contacted her and her husband, so the ball is in their court.

I recently had an EFT that I processed on June 8th. When I looked on June 30th it was still in the issued status. I was going to ask the member about it but missed her at church. I checked again today and it now says cleared. This member has received multiple EFT reimbursements previously so I'm pretty sure her bank details are correct. I'd be interested in knowing when it was actually deposited to her account but it's probably not worth asking her to go to the trouble of finding that out.

My YW President responded, "It looks like we received 2 deposits on the 25th of June."

So the expense was issued on June 21st, and the deposit appeared on the bank account on June 25th, but LCRF stills shows the expense as "Issued" on July 11th.

On July 9th at 1830, the bishop and his counselor entered an expense to reimburse me, the ward clerk. On July 10th at 1307, I received a Disbursement Notification email from CUBS. On July 11th at 0552, my bank account showed the deposit. LCRF still shows the EFT as "Issued".

drepouille wrote:My YW President responded, "It looks like we received 2 deposits on the 25th of June."

So the expense was issued on June 21st, and the deposit appeared on the bank account on June 25th, but LCRF stills shows the expense as "Issued" on July 11th.

I also have two EFT payments that show Issued almost 2 weeks ago. Both payees have received their funds in their accounts, yet the status has not switched to cleared, but shows only received by the bank. The monthly financial statement that we received the month "after" the EFT was received by the member shows the payment as outstanding. Strange.... Others I have done were cleared withing a few days.

I called the GSC and they elevated the ticket to a higher level for analysis. Haven't heard back yet.

I just looked at the list of EFT expenses in LCRF. The last EFT marked as "Cleared" was created on 2 Jun 2019. From 21 Jun 2019 through today, we have created six more EFT expenses. All six still show as "Issued" while I am quite certain that all six have been deposited in the various bank accounts.

Ah, progress. One of the six outstanding EFT expenses now shows as Cleared. It's the one payable to me from July 9th. Eight days isn't so bad. Now if we can just get the ones from June 21st to clear, it would make me feel even better.

All right! All EFTs for my ward now show as Cleared! Now we are ready for our audit this Sunday.

I too have noticed more than one completed ACH reimbursement (member received funds) that subsequently show up on the following months UFS as an "Outstanding Reconciliation item".

Sincerely
a Ward Financial clerk

I just talked to the GSC on this issue of ACH payments showing up as not cleared. I was told that banks have up to 6 (?!?!?!?) months to report these items as cleared, but that the most they had seen was about 3 months.

t0008sa wrote:I just talked to the GSC on this issue of ACH payments showing up as not cleared. I was told that banks have up to 6 (?!?!?!?) months to report these items as cleared, but that the most they had seen was about 3 months.

Strange. Sounds like they're waiting until the transfer can no longer be disputed or some such.

Does the status "issued" for an EFT indicate that the money has transferred to the recipient's bank account? I am more/less fine with the bank taking time to "clear" the EFT, but I would like to know that the recipient has the money. Obviously I would prefer a shorter amount of time for the transaction to be cleared, but I'm more concerned that the recipient is reimbursed timely than anything else. Again...does "issued" indicate that the recipient has received the money in their account?
If so, then am I correct that "cleared" is just the status to indicate that the bank has marked it as such?
If not, how do I know the recipient has received the money in their bank account?
I really don't want to have to email each recipient, each time we issue an EFT.

In the case of a check, "issued" would indicate that the check is printed, and as soon as it is "cleared" then we know that the recipient has cashed the check. Much easier.

You don't know for certain until it says Cleared. If it says Issued then it's in process. The funds may have been deposited but they may not have been. From what I understand there isn't anything the church can do to change this. They are just reporting the information they receive from the banks. But usually it only takes a few days regardless of how long it shows as Issued.

The recipient should receive an email telling them the reimbursement is being made. If it hasn't appeared in their account within 3-4 days after that, they can ask you to follow up with the Global Service Center to find out why.