Managing Customer Checks or Drafts Rejected by Bank

This document explains how to report and reconcile remitted customer checks or drafts that remain unpaid.

Customer checks and drafts can remain unpaid for the these reasons:

They were rejected and returned by the bank. In this case, the bank report containing all payment documents that were collected or rejected is used as a basis for the reporting.
The information required to collect the payment document was insufficient or incorrect.
The payer has guaranteed that there will be enough funds to cover the payment on the payer's account on another day.

For regular checks and preliminary postdated checks (type 2), the bank report is the final confirmation that the customer payment is made or cannot be made. However, definite postdated checks (type 1) are managed like drafts in M3.

Outcome

Bank remitted but rejected customer checks or drafts are reported to the system as unpaid. An accounting journal and a customer payment journal are printed.

Since invoices covered by the rejected checks or drafts are reopened, you can allocate those invoice records to later payments in 'Payment Received. Record' (ARS110).

Accounts receivable and the general ledger are updated. See the respective instruction for more information.

Before you start

The company must have well-defined routines for how to handle unpaid checks or drafts.
Checks or drafts must be remitted to bank to be cashed, as described in Remitting Customer Checks or Drafts to Bank for Collection.
For other starting conditions, see the respective subordinate instruction.

Follow These Steps

Managing customer checks or drafts rejected by bank steps

Contact Payer.
When you receive the bank report, contact the payer to find out why the payment document was rejected. You can then decide how to proceed:
- Remit the payment document again to the bank but with an updated due date, address, bank account, etc.
- Create a new invoice with the same or a different payment method and send it to the payer.
- Reopen the original invoices and include them in the management customer debt and customer credit routines.
Report Customer Check/Draft Rejected by Bank.
Report rejected checks and drafts in 'Draft/Check. Report Unpaid' (ARS340). This includes checks that have been remitted to bank as well as checks that were rejected by the bank when you tried to cash them manually.
The drafts reported can be rejected before or after having been reconciled, although it is more common to use (ARS340) for reporting discounted and already reconciled drafts.
Report Remitted Draft/Definite Postdated Check Rejected by Bank before Collection.
An alternative way to remit the payment document again for collection is to remove the payment documents that have not been reconciled from the list of remitted payment documents in 'Bank Remittance. Update Payment' (ARS351); called from (ARS350), which is ran from 'Bank Remittance. Reconcile Payment' (ARS350) or in 'Bank Remittance. Update Details ' (ARS356), which is ran from 'Bank Remitt. Reconcile Payt per Due Date' (ARS355). The documents are then automatically returned to their initial not remitted status and can be included in a new bank remittance statement.