All DPS Invoices To Be Delayed 2-5 Days

A recent change in DPS programming will cause a delay in the payment of all DPS invoice payments. We have been informed by the help desk, and later confirmed by a JPMO-HHGS employee, that all invoices will take between 2 and 5 days to move from DPS to the US Bank payment system once all line items have been approved or denied. Previous to this change, those invoices would move for payment in less than 24 hours of being approved or denied. We have also heard the delay referenced as 5-7 days, but so far our records indicate the 2-5 day delay is accurate.

We are not entirely clear on the reason for the change, but it appears to be a side effect of an attempt to improve the export process in DPS, which sends completed invoices to US Bank for payment. Since an DPS update patch was installed in early October, we have seen intermittent problems with transmission between DPS and the US Bank system, which were apparently being caused by the export process.

The obvious result of this delay will be an immediate increase in the payment times for all DPS invoices. DPS payments were already taking longer  than CWA invoices, and an additional 2-5 days will have an impact on cash flow for TSPs.

This delay will also make it much harder to identify future transmission problems. Previously, if an invoice had been approved or denied, but  had not moved to US Bank’s system after 24 hours, we were immediately researching the problem. If we saw it happening on multiple invoices, we would notify the help desk, JPMO-HHGS, and Syncada that there may be a transmission problem. Now, we will be forced to wait a full week before determining if there is a problem, or if it is the normal delay. During this waiting period, if a transmission error has occurred, thousands of invoices will be caught up in the problem before we even know about it.

While we applaud efforts to reduce the transmission problems, this delay is clearly a step in the wrong direction. We would hope that JPMO-HHGS would make an effort to remove this delay soon, but until that is accomplished, TSPs should prepare for slower payment times in DPS.

Related Posts

1. PPSOs Asked to Stop Processing Invoices - September 14th, 2010
2. Transmisson Issues between PT and CWA - October 19th, 2007
3. Corrected Invoices - November 25th, 2009