EFT/EDI Child Support Payments

Teleconference

Minutes from the Federal/State Agencies EFT/EDI Child Support Payments Project Teleconference, January 19, 2005

Participants

The bi-monthly Federal Agency/State EFT/EDI Child Support Payments Project teleconference meeting was held on Wednesday, January 19 at 2 p.m., ET. The following Federal agencies participated in the teleconference: the Department of the Treasury's Financial Management Service (FMS), the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE central office and CSENet representatives), the Public Health Service (PHS), the General Services Administration (GSA), and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS), Cleveland, Denver, and Indianapolis. The following States participated in the teleconference: CA, CO, DC, GA, GU, FL, HI, IA, IL, IN, KY, LA, LA County, MI, MN, MS, MT, NC, NE, NY, OH, OR, PA, RI, SD, TX, UT, WA, WI, WY. Lovenia Murray of FMS facilitated the meeting and reminded participants to register in advance for each teleconference at FMS's web site at http://fms.treas.gov/csp/confcall/index.html.

Federal Agency Updates

• GSA:   GSA handles payroll for 31 other federal agencies. They have converted all their child support payments to e-payments except those going to CA and SC.
  
  
• The Department of State:   The Department of State is working on case reconciliation with the states. Jesse Chavez of FMS Kansas City is the liaison. If your state has received a file from Jesse Chavez, please compare it with what you have on your automated system for those orders and return the file to Jesse as soon as possible.

Guam seeking electronic payments

A representative from Guam was on the call and asked states and federal agencies to send their payments electronically to Guam if they are still sending paper checks. For more information, contact Vicky Pickop at Vicky.pickop@guamcse.net.

Voluntary allotments from DFAS sent electronically

Representatives from the voluntary allotment pay branches had been invited to participate in the call to answer questions/address issues states have regarding service personnel sending/trying to send their voluntary allotment payments electronically to SDUs.

FL reported that they receive many calls from service personnel, asking for FL's routing transit number (RTN) and SDU bank account number. These service personnel are using this information to set up their voluntary allotment payments electronically through DFAS's on-line payment service called MyPay. Although a few states (e.g., TX and VA) may be able to receive those payments electronically, most states (e.g., CO, FL, IA, KY, PA, and WI on the call) indicated that they could not accept those payments because they are in the PPD (direct deposit) format rather than CCD+ or CTX 820 and lack the case information. Also, some consolidated voluntary allotment payments are being sent electronically in the CTX 820 format but without the DED Child Support Addendum segment, which contains the necessary case information.

Other voluntary allotment problems include the following:

1. Sometimes there is no case on the statewide automated child support system to associate with the voluntary allotment payment. In these situations, a service personnel has set up a voluntary allotment, but there is no underlying order for child support, so the SDU does not have a case to which to post the payment.
2. Some voluntary allotment payments are being sent by paper check to the SDU's bank rather than to the SDU centralized collection site.

OCSE will work with DFAS to try to resolve these problems, including changing language on the MyPay web site to let service personnel know that they should not attempt to set up their own electronic voluntary allotments but rather should go through their pay station for this.

NACHA moves web site location for User Guide for Electronic Child Support Payments

NACHA's User Guide for Electronic Child Support Payments (version 4.1) is now listed in the Corporate Payments Council section under Resources. The address is http:www.nacha.org/corporate_payments/Resources/resources.htm.

Next teleconference on EFT/EDI child support payments

The next EFT/EDI teleconference is scheduled for March 16, 2005 at 2:00 p.m. ET. States are reminded to register for the teleconference at http://fms.treas.gov/csp/confcall/index.html to ensure enough lines are allocated.