Direct Debit (ACH)

In a nutshell, we have a relationship with a local bank. Our finance department records the appropriate banking information from the donor (development collects it first and then hands it off), and accounting executes the ACH transaction manually twice a month. It's a bit labor intensive. I know there exist some automated systems for this, but I'm not familiar with them. 


edit: by twice a month, I mean that the donor's account will be charged on one of two possible days in the month (typically the 2nd or the 15th), not that we charge the donor twice monthly.

We process monthly donations (so not sure how membership module affects). I use Batch > Tools > Auto generate to create the batch. All of our EFT donations are scheduled for payment on 5th of the month so I can set that as the date to use, select EFT, pledges and recurring gifts (membership?) and direct debit.  We send the file to bank one day before it's processed so I put appropriate date on the Gift Fields tab for gift date and post date.  After reviewing the batch, you use Tools > Create transmission file for financial institution.  When we first did ours I know that was some small issue with naming of file so that it processed.  Once we got that set, we've done it monthly for years. I actually save the file to a shared folder that finance can access as they send the file to the bank with our membership file.  They receive notification of any payments that did not process and let me know.