Administration & Settings

Welcome to your training on the new Commercial Advantage platform.

Ally Private Wealth Commercial Advantage is a digital treasury platform that gives you access to real time information, seamless payment functionality and practical tools to meet daily cash flow requirements and make well-informed decisions. This training will show you many benefits of the platform including customizable screens to meet your specific needs, an integrated payment center, real time reporting and more.

This Webinar is focused on the Administration section of Commercial Advantage.

Once logged into the platform, you’ll find widgets that are available to be added to the Homepage. These widgets can be customized to fit your individual needs.

Along the left or top of the page, you’ll find menus that reveal additional options and pages within the platform. For today, we’re going to spend our time reviewing the Administration & Settings Menu.

The Administration & Settings Menu allows you to create and manage user activity to fit the needs and responsibilities of your company as well as individual team members.

We’ll start with the User Maintenance page.

You can see that all users are listed for review. Depending on the number of users, you may have to increase or decrease the number displayed with options ranging from 3 to 250 per page. Users can also be filtered and/or sorted by column.

Creating users is a four step process. To simplify, you have the option of copying a user. Click on the dropdown menu next to the user you wish to copy, then select Copy User. Continue with the remaining steps, changing only the items that you should be different for the new user.

If you want to add a new user from scratch, choose the Add New User button in the top left of the screen.

The first step of the four-step process begins with Define User. You can see that some of the fields are pre-populated with your company information, and those that are required are marked with a red asterisk. Once you have completed the all of the appropriate fields for this user in line with your company processes, you’ll simply choose Continue at the bottom of the screen. Careful not to choose Add User just yet, as the permissions for this user have not been added to this point—that’s Step 2.

In Step 2 you’ll Set Permissions, and there are tabs for each needing attention. We’ll start with setting permissions for Payments.

You’ll first select the Payment Types the user will need for their role which they need, such as Wires, Transfers and ACH transactions. You can select the payment types for the user or simply choose Select All. Next, you’ll move to the Assign Payment Permissions where you’ll assign the permissions for each of the payment types identified by the tabs in that section.

Along the left side of the section, you see the Payment Permissions to view, manage or create, and/or approve payments from Imports, Templates or Free Form. And to the right you’ll find the permissions available for Templates for that payment type; either Free Form or Imports. Here, just as in the Payment Types section, you have the freedom to Select All or pick and choose the permission desired. Once you are satisfied with your permission selections for the payment type move to the next payment type you have entitled to the user. Select the permissions for the Payment Type and repeat until you have set the permissions for all types of payments.

Once you have completed making all of your permission settings for the Payments, select the Reporting tab to set the users reporting permissions. Here you’ll find the available permissions related to the reports found in the Commercial Advantage platform, such as Admin Reports, Scheduled Exports, Controlled Disbursement, Balance and Transactions as well as other reporting options. Once you have made your permission selections for this user move to the next tab at the top, Risk Management.

Risk Management is where you’ll be able to set the permissions for Check Services, Manual as well as Imports, Positive Pay Processing, and both Placing and Cancelling of Stop Payments. Complete making your selections for the user and select the Administration tab where you’ll be able to set the users more detailed Commercial Advantage settings. Such as, General Administration, Payment Beneficiaries as well as User and Payment Administration.

You’ll have the ability to set the permissions related to Bank Accounts (this is for updating the account names which is not recommended except for those that would update for the complete organization) and Imports to view and manage.

The Beneficiary Address Book is where payment recipients can be pre-loaded for speedier payment creation for those more frequently made payments. You can see that permissions can be set to View, Manage or Create, as well as Approve, much the same as for Payments and Templates.

With the migration to Commercial Advantage there are a number of available alert permissions that can be set from the Alerts tab, including Admin, Reporting and Payments. Allowing all users permission for all alerts is recommended, however of course you are free to use your discretion based on organization and user needs. Now that you have completed all of Step 2 which is setting permissions, it's time to move to Step 3 and Assign Accounts.

In order to begin Assigning Accounts for the user, you’ll choose the number 3 above where you see Assign Accounts. You’ll see tabs related to the Bank Accounts, ACH Originators, and Restricted Templates. The Bank Accounts tab is where you’ll assign the company accounts to the user. You can see that you can shorten the work by simply selecting the Apply All Current and Future Accounts, or you can select the individual accounts as you see fit for the user. At the ACH Originators tab you’ll capture which accounts the user will have permission to originate ACH transactions from. Once you have selected either all accounts or specific accounts for the user, you’ll move to the Restricted Templates tab, to allow the user access to those templates that may be more sensitive than others.

The final Step is to Apply Approval Limits for the user. The approval limits can be set for the different transaction types, and drilled to a transaction limit as well as a full daily limit as desired. You have the ability to apply the limits to all payment types or you can set different limits per type. The applying of limits is not required, and if not set, the default for the user will be the limit agreed to upon set up with Ally Private Wealth.

Once you have completed making all of the selections for the new user and are satisfied, you’ll select Add User from the bottom of the page. The user will be added to your Commercial Advantage platform in the User Maintenance widget in an Entered status awaiting approval from a user with the permissions to do so. To approve the user, from the User Maintenance widget you would simply choose the box to the far left of the user and select Approve from the bottom of the widget. If the addition of the user was completed by someone with Auto Approval permissions, the action will automatically be executed upon submission of the new user.

Back on the Home Page, you can see that there is a notification line for New Users needing approval. When the user is added and approval needed, the notification will be displayed for those who have the permission to do so. They will be able to move to the User Maintenance widget by selecting View to the far right of the line and commence with reviewing and approving the newly added user. Once the user is approved, they will be able to proceed with the login process as a first time user.

Now we’ll make our way back to the User Maintenance page to edit or “modify” a user. Remember those other actions from the dropdown in the actions column? Here is where you’ll choose Modify to adjust the permissions of a user as the needs of the user change. Simply make the updates and choose Update at the bottom of the page and then, once approved the user will have the updated permissions upon their next login.

As we continue looking at the Administration and Settings Menu, you’ll see the Preferences page. This is where the name of accounts can be modified for the entire organization. Caution should be taken here, as the changes will be seen and realized for the Commercial Advantage Platform and not just your view.

The Contact Center page is where you’ll be able to create a vender/payee rolodex listing of payees or beneficiaries of your payments. To add a beneficiary, choose the Add new contact link and fill out all of the required fields with a red asterisk as well as the other appropriate fields you want from the contact section and then Add Payment Account Information by choosing the arrow in the blue ribbon. Once you have completed all the information, you’ll select Save Contact at the bottom of the screen. Just as with the New Users, depending on your permissions you may have to Approve the contact prior to being ready to use for payment processing.

The Administration and Settings Menu also offers an Imports page containing both maps or the imported files themselves. File Import History gives visibility to the files that have already been imported where you’ll see the Status, View and Repair based on actions needed. The Import Maps widget displays the maps used for the different imports your company uses. Those imports could be for Positive Pay, NACHA, Payroll or any others that you bring from your accounting software into the Commercial Advantage Platform. From the Import Maps page, you'll be able to View, Modify, Delete or Add import maps for your organization.

The Admin and User can establish alerts from the Alerts Center in the Administration and Settings menu. As a reminder, all alerts will need to be re-established upon conversion to the Commercial Advantage Platform. To begin setting up alerts, the recipients of the alerts will need to be added by choosing the Recipients tab and selecting Insert. Admins can add recipients for those company established alerts and the users will be able to add recipients for their own personal alerts based on their role and preferences. Once the recipients have been added, the alerts can be set from the Alerts tab by selecting Add New Alert. Here you can see the red asterisk items that are required to set up the alert, beginning with the Alert Name. Next, choose the Alert Group and Type which will present the alert options to select. The Alert Subject Line prepopulates, although it can be added to the users’ preferences. Once the alert is chosen, additional fields will be presented based on that alert, such as Schedule Hours (in 24 hour time), Account Numbers as well as Amounts. Once the selections have been made select Save and the alert is immediately active. Alerts are great active reminders of activity completed or actions needed.

Selecting Audit Information from the Administration and Settings Menu allows you to run reporting on User Access related to a number of categories and events within the Commercial Advantage Platform for your organization. Simply identify your choice of activities and the information and reporting will be presented based on your organizations controls.

Within the Commercial Advantage Platform there is a great resource for additional assistance found here, at the Help Menu. Within Help you’ll find step by step guides related to General Information like User Administration as well as many other topics.

You also have access to the Ally Private Wealth Commercial Advantage site, where you’ll find quick reference guides, user guides, videos and other webinars that will be provide helpful self-service assistance.

Thank you for watching this video, where we provided an Administration and Settings Overview within Commercial Advantage.