A cross-industry workgroup, under the auspices of the NACHA’s Council for Electronic Billing and Payment (CEBP) developed a best practices approach for minimizing bill payment exceptions that originate from online banking systems. For the purpose of this effort, an online bill payment exception item is defined as:

Online bill payments that are unable to be posted accurately and promptly upon receipt by the Biller to its accounts receivable system due to incorrect account number.

The workgroup completed a number of activities to investigate causal issues of exceptions, and to define associated best practices.  With the collaboration of billers, financial institutions, payment networks, and third-party processors, the CEBP launched the introduction of “The Exception Processing Management Program.”  The goal is for industry stakeholders to incorporate these best practices to:

1. Reduce time and effort needed to research and correctly post payments;
2. Eliminate manual posting of payments;
3. Increase cost effectiveness of the online bill payment service for all stakeholders; and
4. Increase end-user’s satisfaction of the online bill payment service, where payments are posted reliably and timely.
   

Billers, payment processors, and financial institutions are encouraged to use the resources below, which are intended to be a starting point for organizations to implement their own programs to reduce exceptions.