Encumbrance Batch

Encumbering, or holding money in a fund for future use, enables a multi-payment grant to be sent to Financial Edge (FE) with one invoice instead of each payment creating a new invoice. The encumbered invoice in FE is created for the total grant amount. The balance to be paid on the invoice in FE is reduced by each payment as it's processed in a Check Run. See Check Run Processing for more details on sending payments to FE.

When to Encumber a Grant

• Reimbursement Grants: Grant payments go out after a grantee has reported they have spent money related to a grant.
• Scholarships: Multiple payments go out per semester or when a student needs the money, based on their performance and enrollment.
• Multi-year grants: Grants that will go out over several fiscal periods.
• Multi-payment grants: Grants that will go out over a period of time (yearly, quarterly, monthly).

To Create an Encumbrance Batch:

1. Click Batch > Encumbrance Batch > New Encumbrance Batch.
2. Name the Encumbrance Batch with a descriptive name or use the default: Encumbrance Batch - X/XX/20XX. An explanatory phrase will help the user understand what type of grants should be allocated to this Encumbrance Batch.
3. Available grants are listed in the bottom pane. The user can filter the available grants by using the Date, Status and/or Type drop-down lists on the bottom of the window. All grants start out with a status of REQUEST.
4. Highlight the desired grant payments and click the Add or Add All buttons. Thereby moving selected grant payments to the top pane for processing in this Encumbrance Batch.
5. Ensure all payments have a Pay Date, if a Pay Date is missing the invoice in FE is created incorrectly and will not process properly. 
6. The Encumbrance Batch is ready to process after all desired grants are listed in the top pane.

Note: A grant that has already had a payment processed on it cannot be encumbered for the remaining payments.

To Process an Encumbrance Batch:

1. Open the Encumbrance Batch.
2. Open the Finance tab.
3. Click Run to run each step listed starting with the first one. The Pre-Validate step checks that all major fields required for financial processing are available on each grant request. A dialog box will open, click Yes to view the logs.
4. A log will generate after each step to:
   1. Display any problems with the grant requests and
   2. Show which grant requests have invoices created.
5. Close the dialog box and adjust the grants if necessary. After a step is fully successful a green checkmark will appear next to the step, if unsuccessful a red X will be pictured. See the log to determine which grant is not processing correctly.
6. The Create Encumbrances in Finance System step will send the grants to be invoiced in FE. Invoices are created and the grant status is changed to Batched.

The Invoice in FE

Below is a picture of an Encumbered grant in FE before and after the processing of a payment.