Custom Batch Times

The Custom Batch Times feature allows you to choose any hour of the day as your preferred batch cutoff time instead of using the default of 5 PM Eastern Time. Custom batch times help you align the settlement process with your business operations. For example, a merchant in Texas can choose 8 PM CT (9 PM ET) as their batch cutoff time. A merchant in Hawaii can choose 12 AM HST (5 AM ET) as theirs.

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Considerations

When working with the custom batch times, keep the following in mind:

• Batches can close on the hour (for example, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00). Mid-hour times such as 2:30 PM, 10:15 PM aren’t available.
• Transactions until the top of the hour are included in the batch. For example, if a paypoint has batch cutoff time of 9 PM ET, then transactions from 9:00:00.001 PM ET to 9:00:00.000 PM ET the next day are in the same batch.

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Merchant funding timing

Custom batch times can impact funding availability for merchants. Here’s how:

• If the custom batch cutoff time is between 12 AM ET and 5 PM ET, then merchant funding can be as early as the next day, if the paypoint is on Next Day Funding.
• If the custom batch cutoff time is between 6 PM ET and 11 PM ET, then merchant funding can be as early as two days later.

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Migrating to custom batch times

After Payabli configures a custom batch time for your merchant, they’re migrated to the new batch time. On the migration day, the batch for the day will close at 5 PM ET as usual. Then a short batch with transactions from 5 PM ET until the new chosen batch cutoff time will close. Going forward, all batches follow the usual 24 hour cycle with the new custom batch cutoff time.

Here’s an example of how batches work during and after migration. In this example, the merchant has chosen to close batches at 11:00 PM ET.

Migration Day (June 1)

• The last regular batch closes at 5:00 PM ET and includes transactions from May 31, 5:00 PM through June 1, 5:00 PM.
• The short batch closes at 11:00 PM ET, and includes transactions from 5:00 PM till 11:00 PM on June 1

Next Day (June 2+)

• Batches close at 11:00 PM ET each day.
• Batches include full 24 hours of transactions from 11:00 PM the day before through 11:00 PM the current day.

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Voids and refunds

Custom batch times can have an effect on how refunds are processed. The Enhanced Refund Flow is enabled by default for all paypoints that have a custom batch time configured. This feature ensures that refunds are processed at the optimal time to avoid issues with the backend processor.

Custom batch times don’t affect void processing, as only transactions in an open batch can be voided.

See Voids and refunds for more details about how refunds, voids, and reversals are processed.