Voucher Processing

Vouchers in APM are summary-level payment information that are created near the end of the Payout process. After all computation is complete and holds are evaluated (but before Statements are generated), the GenVoucher and CalculateVoucherAmount Tasks are executed to create and populate Voucher records.

Voucher processing tracks the previous balance forward or negative balance and applies it to the current payout amount, resulting in a new amount paid. This is critical for the carrier to track balances owed for accounting purposes and to recoup balances from payees who no longer sell for the carrier.

Let’s look at an example using the carrier in our scenario, SafeCare Insurance. SafeCare pays advance commissions for P&C renewals each year. Let’s say one of our brokers, Deborah Willis, owns a group policy renewed by Page Mortgage Group in January 2022, and was paid the full commission for the year. Now, let’s flash forward to June, when Page Mortgage asks to cancel the policy. This means SafeCare needs to recoup the commissions paid to Deborah for the second half of the year. This is called a clawback.

Typically, the number of dis-enrollments in a given month will be greater than the number of new sales. This results in a payee having a negative net amount paid in a given period. These balances are tracked on the voucher record.

Other functions of the voucher are:

• Tracks Gross amount paid in current payout
• Accumulates and tracks total positive and negative commission amounts separately
• Tracks total number of BrokerHistory records for the voucher to aid in reconciliation
• Tracks the runlist of when voucher was created
• Tracks runlist of when voucher was released for payment
• Links to the statement in APM

Earlier in this unit, we reviewed the key tasks of the Payout process. Two of those tasks, Generate Voucher and Calculate Voucher Amount, are associated with the creation of the voucher.

During the Generate Voucher task, a blank voucher is created for each broker, and key fields such as the Voucher Number (VoucherNo) and Date Paid (DatPaid) are stamped on the Broker History record.

During the Calculate Voucher Amount task, the voucher amount is calculated, taking into account prior balances and the voucher record is updated with this amount.

Voucher Processing Options

By default, the Payout process generates a voucher for each vendor. In Unit 3, we learned the distinction between producers, brokers, and vendors; and that a vendor is the entity that is compensated by the carrier. Specifically, the field used on the broker record that distinguishes the vendors is the VendorNo field.

The image below shows an example of the relationship between the producer record for Deborah Willis and the vendor record. In this case they are one and the same; in other words, Deborah is the entity who is compensated for her sales. This means the Vendor Number is the same as the Producer Number: DW-001. If they were different, the voucher would be generated for the vendor, not the producer.

You can also manage the way vouchers are processed in several ways.

The APM Configuration page, under Administrator – Configuration – Options, has two options that control voucher processing.

Process.voucher.generation allows you to specify additional fields that would generate a new voucher record. Note that the fields must exist on both the Voucher and BrokerHistory tables, and the VendorNo will always generate a new voucher regardless of this setting.

Process.voucher.balances can be used to specify additional fields (in addition to VendorNo) the combination of which results in the balances being maintained together.

As an example, the image below shows a configuration that adds the Financial Company. This means even if the Vendor ID is the same, a separate voucher will be generated for each Financial Company.

The following table contains the key fields that are involved in the voucher process. Some of these are fields on the voucher itself, while some are in the BrokerHistory table or the formula details. Note that some fields, such as RunListNoVoucher, return a sequence number and are not displayed in the user interface. You can use the SQL Workbench to create a query to reference these fields.

The image below shows the voucher record with key fields highlighted in the user interface.