Agency FAQ

IPP services are available for civilian agencies, both U.S. Department of the Treasury (TDO) and Non Treasury (NTDO) disbursed offices. IPP uploads payment information from Treasury systems for TDOs and imports ACH files produced by NTDO agencies.

To initiate IPP participation, please Contact Us by phone or e-mail. The IPP Agency Outreach Team will respond with several options, such as including your agency in a scheduled event or coordinating a separate phone conference meeting. Open events are posted on this web site as they are scheduled.

No. There are no fees for services or support. The Treasury Department provides IPP services free of charge to government agencies and enrolled vendors. 

The IPP Agency Outreach Team will work with your agency to complete the IPP Participation Agreement. After that, the Agency Implementation Team (AIT) will work with you to create an implementation project plan.

Implementation times will vary depending on the set of functions your agency chooses to implement. Baseline duration estimates for an implementation in five phases is illustrated in the table below:

Phase	Description	Estimated Duration
I	Pre-Kickoff Outreach	1 month
II	Kickoff	1-2 days
III	Discovery and Planning	1-3 months
IV	Implementation	3-6 months – depending on PO, Invoice and Workflow function selections.
V	Production Go-Live	2-5 days

Yes. Connectivity to TWAI is required for IPP implementation, and agencies may use an existing connection. IPP file exchanges are bi-directional, flowing to and from your agency’s ERP system.

IPP reports EFT vendor payments only. No check payments are reported. IPP posts Treasury Department payments as well as payments made by NTDO agencies. However, CCD, CCD+ and CTX payments are posted in the system.

IPP posts payments that are settled in full, returned, or canceled and replaced with reduced payments. Reduced payments include a display of offset details in the Collector (vendor application) only.

Agencies may send digital purchase order, blanket purchase order and change order files to IPP where they may be viewed online by both the agency and the associated vendor and downloaded by the vendor. Vendors may also “flip” online purchase orders into invoices or credit memos. Purchase orders include schedule and distribution details. Version numbers may be recorded when changes are made. Orders also are linked to associated invoices and payments. IPP does not replace your agency’s ERP procurement system, which is the authoritative source system for order transactions.

IPP supports order upload processing for change orders. It supports order versions and links all versioned documents for viewing. 

In addition to receipt of digital invoices from vendors, IPP supports a self-service function for agency users that allows online invoice creation from other sources. PO-based invoices may be created from the digital purchase order or cloned from an existing invoice. Agencies may download and post digital invoice files they entered or that were created by their vendors. Agencies may send invoice status update files to IPP to let their vendors know the “scheduled to pay” status and date.

Yes, IPP supports credit memo creation and processing for agencies and their vendors.

IPP invoice approval workflow is an optional configurable module an agency may choose to use for online invoice approval routing. The IPP Agency Implementation Team will work with agencies during implementation to set up workflow processing. Workflow holds the invoice in the IPP system until all defined approvals are obtained. IPP then downloads the invoice to the agency’s ERP system for final handling.

IPP invoice approval workflow routes an invoice to approvers according to rules defined and maintained by the agency. The workflow rules utilize invoice header information, such as total amount, a cost center identifier, a department identifier or a business unit code. Workflow rules allow multiple configurations per Disburser and include options for escalation, delegation (for vacation or illness), manual reassignment, default approver(s) and e-mail notification upon assignment.

Yes. The IPP Disburser allows agency users to enter invoices online, flip them from orders, or clone existing invoices to add invoices for workflow. This is useful if vendors have not uploaded or entered the invoices online.

All vendors associated with agency invoices must enroll in IPP and then be matched by the agency to support invoice functions. Invoices submitted for workflow are no exception.

Yes. An agency may use the self-service function to enter invoices into IPP in order to process them in workflow. This is useful until vendors learn to submit their digital invoices in IPP.

Yes. IPP supports user configured e-mail notifications for both agency and vendor users. Users may select event-driven notifications and schedule the frequency.

Agencies will prepare enrollment request lists using either the Vendors to Enroll Report or the No Match Report that identifies all the vendors on their master file that need to enroll. Agencies will contact these vendors to identify the contact name and e-mail address for the initial IPP user (account administrator) at the vendor company, and to let them know IPP will send them enrollment e-mails. The agency submits the completed list to IPP enrollment services to manage enrollment. Many agency vendors may already be enrolled in IPP.

The IPP support team and the agency team work together to plan and execute vendor enrollment. The agency team contacts the vendor to get the name and e-mail address of the initial IPP user (account administrator) at the vendor company and prepares the enrollment list. The IPP team creates and activates the vendor accounts (Collectors) and manages enrollment e-mails to vendor users. Agencies may track results online in IPP.

A vendor will complete enrollment when the first user completes provisioning to the IPP application in the Treasury Web Application Infrastructure (TWAI) environment and accepts the online Vendor Participation Agreement. User provisioning consists of logging onto the TWAI web site with the user ID and password sent to the user and accepting the TWAI’s rules of behavior.

An agency may interact with a newly enrolled vendor as soon as the Collector (vendor) account is activated by the IPP Customer Support Representative (CSR), and the agency matches one of its vendor master records to the Collector. Agency “matching” does not depend on new Collector users completing provisioning. An agency should contact Collectors before sending them PO files to confirm their users are set up to receive and process them.

Agencies will use an IPP report to identify enrollment candidates and then they can create any number of enrollment request lists to complete the enrollment of their full vendor master. Contacting vendors to confirm their names and e-mail addresses and interest is the key factor in how long this process will take. Agencies may not need to enroll all their vendors because a significant percentage of their vendors may already be enrolled in IPP.

Agencies will add an IPP flag to vendor records in their ERP system and develop a process to set it for vendors they match in IPP. Purchase Order and Invoice status files extracted for IPP will be filtered by this vendor flag.

An agency’s copy of its Master Vendor List (XMVL) in IPP establishes the “crosswalk” between the agency vendor record and the IPP vendor directory. When agencies submit a “match” between their vendor record and an IPP vendor, transactions will be submitted to the corresponding IPP Collector account and invoices are sent back to the agency’s ERP system with the appropriate ERP vendor values.

An agency may upload a copy of its Master Vendor List (XMVL) file to IPP using XML in a configured scheduled task or by using an online browser upload request for a .CSV file.

A copy of the agency Master Vendor List (XMVL) is housed in IPP to support “matching” to the IPP vendor directory.  The agency record keys will be associated to IPP record keys, so that agency PO, Invoice and Payment files may be properly associated to IPP agency and vendor accounts.

An agency Disburser user must establish a relationship between each vendor record in its copy of the Master Vendor List (XMVL) and each vendor Collector account using the IPP matching function. IPP runs a scheduled process to identify proposed 100 percent TIN matches. Agencies may open a report of proposed matches, review and accept each page or accept individual matches.

Yes. The agency XMVL and the IPP vendor directory may include thousands of records. Online manual matching for each pair is not an efficient process. IPP supports automated matching by running a nightly process. It will display all proposed matches to an agency user, who may accept all or selected matches.

IPP has two levels of the Disburser application:  the Disburser Adminstrator and Disburser modules. The Disburser Administrator module is available for users with the administrator’s permission. They will use this application to: set up users and roles; assign permissions; create groups and assign members; define rules and validation for data entry and invoice submission; and create and schedule integration tasks. The Administrator may configure workflow routing and assign filters to users to limit their view of transaction pages or vendor pages.  Please see the next question for details on the Disburser module.

The Disburser application manages the following transaction types:

• PO/Blanket PO
• PO-based Invoices
• Credit Memos
• Payment Information

Functions include vendor management, transaction searches and reports, invoice approvals, and self-service online invoice creation. Disburser users may also configure their own transaction event-driven e-mail notifications.

Agencies may create roles and levels of workflow. The agency assigns users to roles and creates rules for invoice assignment to set up workflow in IPP. The maintenance of these roles and workflow rules remains with the agency’s administrators.

IPP uses the ALC owned by each federal agency during IPP Disburser account set up to identify the correct Disburser for payments posting to IPP, and potentially to manage transaction ownership in Shared Service Provider agencies. The ALC on the payment record allows IPP to post it to the correct IPP Disburser. Thus, an ALC value may be assigned to only one IPP Disburser account.

Yes. IPP supports a number of mechanisms to allow agencies to use their accounting data reference sets when entering or routing invoices. Currently, workflow may only be applied to the entire invoice, so the accounting codes for use in routing are given at the invoice-header level.

Agencies will compile a set of UOM codes and descriptions for the Agency Implementation Team to map to the IPP standard set and upload to IPP.  This step is required for order and invoice services to display IPP standard values.

Agencies will compile a set of their discount terms in a template and present them to the Agency Implementation Team for upload support. The discount terms are parsed into the template and loaded into IPP to support discount amount and anticipated date-due computation. The terms data may optionally also display to vendors, who may select an alternate approved (and better) term than the one given on the PO when creating an invoice if the associated agency has configured the permission for this function.

Yes. IPP reinforces agency compliance with Prompt Payment business processes through invoice aging reports, configurable escalation strategies and e-mail alerts.  The workflow function supports the recording and passing of the approval date to the agency ERP system to start the Prompt Payment clock for invoice processing.

Yes. IPP supports secure user sessions and data access. IPP is in compliance with Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) requirements and is fully integrated with the Treasury Department User Provisioning Service (UPS), which manages user authentication and application-level permissions.

IPP supports administrative accounts that manage user roles and permissions. Internet file exchanges are secured with Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) and Transport Layer Security (TLS). Bank account data associated with payment remittance is encrypted in the database.

We strive to have the IPP site in compliance with the accessibility requirements of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. It is an ongoing effort as new functions are tested and added.

Please call (866) 973-3131 or e-mail us at IPPCustomerSupport@fms.treas.gov to report any compliance issues you may find on the site.

Yes.  In 2007, IPP was recognized by FSIO as a best practice for electronic receipt of invoices from vendors. In addition, IPP leverages cloud computing best practices to help agencies comply with the Federal Cloud First initiative. IPP also supports two of the Treasury Department’s 12 transformational initiatives aimed at reforming federal financial management, and is an approved Shared Service offering under the Shared First initiative.

IPP is not integrated with the CCR. All government vendors must continue to maintain their account data in the CCR registry and activate it annually. Vendor data in IPP depends on the source agency to manage bank account validation and current information. Some IPP agencies use the CCR for this purpose.

IPP services are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The IPP Customer Support Team is available to assist users Monday through Friday (excluding federal holidays) from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern and can be reached at (866) 973-3131.

The IPP Customer Support Team is available to answer customer questions, provide assistance with login, and troubleshoot any issues encountered. In addition, the IPP application has help links for all major functions.

Customer support is provided free of charge to agencies and vendors. In addition to the toll-free number (866-973-3131), the IPP Customer Support Team can be reached at IPPCustomerSupport@fms.treas.gov.

The IPP Rapid Application Development (RAD) schedule supports two or three new releases per year.

The following IPP releases are scheduled for 2012:

Release 2.4 will deploy in July

Two releases are scheduled for 2013.

Yes. Agencies may add the following message to their web sites:

About the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Management Service (FMS) Invoice Processing Platform (IPP) System

IPP is a secure online system that exchanges digital POs and invoices and enables retrieval of EFT payment history. IPP services are easy to use and are available at no charge to participating federal agencies and their vendors. To enroll in the IPP Payment Notification Service, call IPP Customer Support at (866) 973-3131.

IPP Customer Support is available to assist users from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern, Monday through Friday (excluding holidays). A user ID and password are required to view payment information.