Now that you know the basics, you can start scanning your checks! From within your Giving account, navigate to the Settings gear and find the “Automated Check Deposit” tile. Selecting this will take you to the SmartPay Portal login screen. Only the account owner will have access to this tile so you may need to reach out to them to receive the correct permissions.
After logging in, simply create a batch in the SmartPay portal and begin scanning your checks. Select Transactions from the left-hand menu and under Check Processing, click Remote Deposit Complete. From here you can manage open deposits or create a new deposit.
To scan and deposit checks, click the Create New Deposit button in the bottom right of the screen. Deposits are typically created for each fund or giving opportunity.
Enter the number of checks and the total dollar amount of the checks on the left side of the screen. You may now scan the checks and begin to see the images and details populate within the deposit. There may be a few minutes needed for the dollar amounts to appear and you can select the refresh button to see if they are available yet. Additionally, you may see alert icons indicating that a MICR number was unreadable. Try clicking “Refresh” at the top of the grid after a few minutes to see if it clears up. If it doesn’t, you will need to rescan the check by clicking “Rescan” on the far right of the check’s row. As a best practice, try to keep your deposits to no more than 100 checks.
By default, the deposit will specify “Mailed In/Dropped Off” as the mechanism by which you received the check. Should you have checks that would be categorized as “Back Office”, you may select that option from the Payment Type Dropdown.
When you have completed your batch of checks, you can select Close Deposit. Make sure before you close the deposit that the scanned total and the control total match both the number of checks and the total dollar amount of the checks. Note: selecting Close Deposit doesn’t immediately send the checks to be deposited, they are sent at 7 PM CST each day – this allows multiple batches to be sent at the same time which reduces costs for you! However, within a few minutes you should see the checks populate in your giving account. More on that below!
Important Distinction between a deposit and a batch
Deposits in SmartPay are not the same as a funded batch. Deposits allow for a group of checks to be scanned together and processed together but they may not settle in a batch of checks in the same group. The Deposit Report in your Giving account will show the details of the funds that were settled in your bank account.
Special Cases:
To refund a check, the check must have been an ACH conversion, not a Check21 transaction. To initiate a refund, from the dashboard, click the “Processed” option. This will bring up the list of deposits that have been processed. Find the check you want to refund and select it. At the top, you will see an “Actions” button – select it then select “Refund.”
If you need to void a check for some reason, as long as the status of the check has not moved to “Processed”, you may void the check. Via the dashboard, click on the number in the “Approved” section to see the checks with that status and find the check you want to void. Once found, select “Actions” and “Void”. Voids typically need to be done same-day otherwise you’ll want to refund the check after it has moved to the “Processed” state.
Pay close attention to your agreed upon velocity limits that you created when you onboarded to ProfitStars. You may end up paying more fees if you submit a check or number of checks that ultimately push you over the limits. Those limits include:
- Daily processing dollar amount limit
- 14-day processing dollar amount limit
- Individual check dollar amount limit
Reach out to support if you need a reminder of your specific velocity limits.
Funding:
Once the deposits of checks are submitted for processing and there are no issues found, they will be processed along with any other deposits closed out that day at 8 PM ET / 7 PM CT.
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