Avon Grove moves to electronic vendor payments as bank finishes testing

Avon Grove School District staff told the Committee of the Whole on April 8 that the district is ready to begin full use of an integrated payables platform to replace paper checks and speed vendor payments.

The systems improvement action team update explained that Truist has completed “end-to-end” testing, which runs a test file through a live environment to surface issues not seen in a test environment. The presenter said the tests came back clean and that Truist is building the district’s production environment, with a target to be live in less than two weeks. Staff said that, once in production, the district expects to stop issuing paper checks in-house and begin using ACH and virtual card payments.

District staff also described a vendor onboarding campaign being run with FIS (the provider of the integrated payables product). They said they identified about 115 high-dollar, high-volume vendors likely to enroll in ACH or virtual card payments and that outreach (email and phone calls) began in March. Staff reported informal vendor feedback that some providers welcome electronic payments because they avoid delays caused by the mail.

The district noted benefits beyond speed: electronic payments can reduce processing costs and, for virtual card transactions, may generate rebates that offset operating costs. Staff said training from Truist will occur when the production environment is ready.

No formal action was taken; the update was informational and staff took questions from board members about timing and readiness.