Bill Pay Help
New CheckFree Bill Pay User
If you are a first time user of Bill Pay, follow the steps below to enroll:
- Once login to Online Banking is complete, click on Bill Pay tab
- Read the Online Banking Notifications page click Continue to Online Banking
- Read and click I Agree for the Bill Payment Terms & Conditions.
- Click Submit
- The Online Banking tabs will appear, click on Add a Bill
- Follow the steps to add the bill
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Bill Pay Terms & Conditions
- The Bill Pay Terms & Conditions display when you first choose the Bill Pay tab in Online Banking. You will have to read and accept the Terms & Conditions to set up Bill Pay.
- Once you have signed up for Bill Pay, the Terms & Conditions are found after clicking on the Bill Pay tab on the main screen. The link is found right under the Bill Pay tab.
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Dynamic Calendar
Selecting the Calendar icon, tabbing, or inserting the cursor into the Pay Date field opens the calendar version of the Payment Assistant.
The calendar feature shows which billers make this feature available.
- Dates shown in blue include earliest available payment dates, as well as other eligible payment dates.
- The earliest possible payment date will reflect the appropriate cut off time supported by the sponsor and biller.
- Today’s date appears in bold.
- If you have set up a bill reminder due date for the biller, it will show the due date with a red square around it.
- Dates shown in gray are unavailable
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Scheduling the Payment
After you fill in the dollar amount of your payment and your payment date, you will need to scroll to the bottom of the Payment Center page and click on the Make Payments button.
Once you click the Make Payments button, you can review the payment you just scheduled.
The Payment Assistant, which displays a quick peek of biller details and history, will now appear in a row expanded below the selected biller within the Pay Bills.Top
Atypical Payment Warning
A new alert message will display to warn that a payment amount is significantly more or less than your typical payment for a bill. The alert is displayed when the average payment amount for the last six months varies from the current payment by a factor of ten. (For example, if a user types $150.00 rather than their normal payment amount of $15.00, the shown warning will be presented to alert the user to a potential error.)
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Duplicate Payment Error Message
If a duplicate pending payment is already set up for a particular biller you will receive an error message. You will be required to change requested amount or date for payment to be processed.
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Error Message to Change Date
If you enter the date for a payee and receive the error message below, you will need to enter another date due to the fact the payment will not be processed in time. The date may be displayed in blue or auto-filled by the system. CheckFree can still reject that date when you try to submit and ask for a later date.
The error message appears above the intended payee.
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Review Payments
On this screen, you can to do the following:
- Add a memo to the payment (for paper payments)
- The Memo feature is for paper payments only. The Memo field is a 34-character field that you can edit for any payment sent as a check. Both the memo and the account number will print on the check.
- Make changes to the payment
- Cancel the payment
- Submit the payment
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Payment Confirmation
Once you click on the Submit Payments button, you will be taken to the Payment Confirmation page. From this page, you can do the following:
- Print the page for the payment you just scheduled.
- Add a note to the payment.
- A payment note can be added to any payment in a 256-character field. Payment notes are your personal use within the application and will not be printed on any checks or remitted to the biller. Payment notes are viewable from the Bill Detail screen.
- Write down the confirmation number for the payment.
- Request an eBill if the biller offers this function.
- Set up an Automatic Payment for the biller (You can also perform this function from the Manage Your Bills page).
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Pending Payments
- Once you have scheduled your payment, it appears on the Payment Center page under the Pending Payments section.
- You can change or cancel the payment from this section, or you can change or cancel it from the Bill History page.
If you choose to edit the pending payment, the following information can be edited:
- Bank account information (if more than 1 payment account is available)
- Pay date
- Amount
Once you save your changes, you will receive a new confirmation page showing the changes.
You must click the Finished button to process the change.
Once the payment has started processing, “Processing” appears as the status in the Pending Payments mini section, advising you of this change.
When the payment shows Processing no changes can be made.
You can now filter or sort your Pending Payments by Pay From accounts, Biller Name, Amount or Date. A drop down box will be available if you have multiple Pay From accounts. To arrange by Biller Name, Amount or Date, click on the Sort link.
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Flexible eBill Payments
You are able to schedule a payment for various amounts relevant to a delivered eBill, including:
- Minimum Amount Due
- Amount Due
- Account Balance
- Other Specified Amount
You have control, in both the pop-up window and the Payment Center, to decide on a payment amount, and to change the amount and/or pay date prior to confirming the payment transaction.
While the payment is in “pending” status, you can edit the payment prior to processing.
The specific amount options offered to you will vary, dependent upon which information is provided by the biller for a given eBill.
When scheduling a payment to a Biller and a “Bill Due” icon is present, a checkbox on the Confirm Payment screen is now available to indicate whether you would like to apply the payment to the eBill, or retain the unpaid status of the eBill and keep the payment separate (additional payments). Note that this does not affect the biller’s application of the payment, but rather only controls whether the “Bill Due” icon continues to display on the Payment Center.
If multiple due eBills exist for the same Biller:
- Payments made from a Bill Due dialog box will be applied to the particular eBill selected
- Payments made from the Payment Center will be applied to the most recent eBill that is due
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Payment Center
- To activate the Payment Assistant, click the biller name, or insert the cursor in the Amount field.
- If the biller has a managed relationship with Fiserv, “Address on File” will appear at the top of the Payment Assistant. If the biller does not have a managed relationship with Fiserv, you can see the address you entered for your biller.
When you click the Update link in the Payment Assistant, an application layer appears allowing you to update information for the biller. The amount of information you can change depends on whether or not the biller has a managed relationship with Fiserv.
When you close the application layer, the Payment Center remains open and any data already entered remains intact.
Modifying a Bill - Security Enhancements
An anti-fraud email confirmation message is sent to you if the biller name, biller account number, or biller address has been changed.
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Manage My Bills
The Manage My Bills page assists in setting up and managing each biller. Edits, such as adding an automatic payment, updating biller information, and setting up reminders can completed from this single view for any biller.
When the biller is selected, there will be options for that particular bill. For instance, some companies may have eBills and some may not. For eBills already created in the Payment Center, you may:
- Add an electronic version of my bill (which would mean getting eBill)
- Stop/Delete electronic version of my bill (which would cancel eBill)
- Update biller information- if the biller can be updated the option will be available, if it cannot be updated it is due to the fact CheckFree has a relationship with that company and guarantees the payment will get to the correct address (managed biller).
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Setting Up and Deleting Bill Reminders
Bill reminders allow you to establish due dates for your bills and receive notification on the Payment Center page, or alerts via Internet email when bills are due.
If you have eBills selected, you will also be notified when the bill is due.
If you are receiving an ebill, it appears in the Reminder section as soon as the bill is received from your biller. When a bill is past due, the reminder appears in red. Past due reminders typically disappear five (5) days after the bill’s due date. eBill reminders will remain in the mini-module until they are filed.
To stop a bill reminder, you can go to Manage My Bills and stop the reminder. If you have the biller set up as an eBill, you can select to no longer receive the bill electronically if you do not want to be reminded, which is also under Manage My Bills.
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Scheduling Automatic Payments
Automatic Payments can be enabled for billers that are activated for ebills and for billers paid on a recurring basis. Automatic payments are set up from the Payment Assistant or via the Manage Your Bills tab. The type of automatic payment that is set up depends whether or not you are receiving ebills.
If you have paid the biller the same payment amount three months in a row, the Payment Assistant recognizes this and asks you if this is your regular payment amount.
The Automatic Payment Confirmation page appears only if you initiated the automatic payment set up via the Payment Assistant.
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Recurring Automatic Payments
Once the recurring automatic payment has been enabled, the Auto Pay icon appears next to the biller on the Payment Center page.
A Change and Stop link is now available as a shortcut when you click on Auto Pay. This will assist with managing your Automatic Payments.
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Setting up Automatic Payments for Electronic Bills
Once the repeating automatic payment for the eBill has been enabled, the Auto Pay and Bill icons appear next to the biller on the Payment Center page.
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Payment Categories
The use of Categories allows transactions to be grouped by industry or biller type, such as “Mortgage,” “Utilities,” and “Telephone”.
- New personalized categories within your bill payment account can be created.
- Categories are integrated into the appropriate screens within the product, such as Bill History and Manage My Bills screens.
Filtering and sorting capabilities based on category are available on the Bill History screen.
The Payment Assistant also displays the Category listing for the biller chosen.
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Get Rid of Past Due Payment Reminder
- The most convenient way to get rid of the “past due” eBill reminder would be to click the bill due icon located in Red next to the biller under the Features section of the Payment Center and schedule a payment directly from the eBill when the eBill has been delivered.
- If you did not pay the bill directly from the eBill and just scheduled a payment and you have eBill reminders turned on, you will continue to get reminders until you go to the Bill History section of Online Bill Payment and file the bill. You would search for the merchant in question and locate the Status section within Bill History Section. You then can to choose the “unpaid” status and then click on “view details”, from there you can choose to File The Bill by choosing one of the payment method options in the drop down list.
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Bill History
The Bill History page allows you to review your payments and eBills for 24 months.
- You can view 60 payments per page.
- The alternating row colors provide the look and feel similar to a checkbook register.
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Sorting Bill History
There are different ways you can sort your bill history:
- Biller name
- Category
- Status
- Funding account
If you sort your bill history, navigate to another section of the bill pay product, and then return to this page, your bill history remains sorted by the last search option.
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Current View and Additional Options
If you choose to enter your own date range, you can do so by clicking the drop-down box in the Current View section. You are provided with the number of days/months (past 24 months), along with the specific dates (Nov. 2009 and future).
You can then choose to search for additional options by using the Additional Options drop-down box.
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Viewing Bill Pay History Prior to CheckFree Conversion
If you want to obtain your old bill pay history prior to the CheckFree conversion, click on the Bill Pay tab in Online Banking and click on ‘Archive Payment History’.
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Viewing Bill Detail
To view details for a particular payment or eBill, click the View Detail link from the Bill History page. From the Bill Detail page, you can:
- Print the history for the payment
- Determine when your funding account was debited
- Determine when the biller is scheduled to receive the funds
- If available, view when the biller posted the payment to your account
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Bill Detail for eBills
If you access the Bill Detail screen for an electronic bill, you will see the screen below and will be able to:
- View the check status
- View the status of the eBill
- Print
- File the eBill
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Filing an eBill
You have the ability to file an eBill. If you file the eBill, then later wish to schedule a payment, you must do so from the Payment Center page.
You can also file the eBill from the eBill Summary screen, which is accessible from the Payment Center.
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eBill Download Functionality
You can download and save a copy of your eBill to your computer in PDF format. The download capability is supported at a biller level.
If applicable for that particular biller, a download link is available on the top frame of the Bill Detail screen.
Also included is a link to download the free Adobe® Acrobat® Reader.
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