Glossary

ACH

Automated Clearing House. ACH is an electronic network for financial transactions that processes credit and debit transactions into and from individual and business accounts. ACH direct deposit payments include state employee and annuity payrolls, state employee travel, and payments to individuals and business entities.

Assistance Listing Numbers

Formerly the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA), the Assistance Listing Numbers (ALN) are related to federal programs, projects and services that provide assistance or benefits to the American public.

CSV File

Comma Separated Values file. A daily file of TINS transactions that includes processed, non-processed and dropped transactions for payee, direct deposit and hold maintenance submitted by an agency via online and batch (EFT).

Custodial agency

The agency that sets up and maintains a payee’s direct deposit account information in TINS.

Debtor

An individual or business entity owing a debt to the state of Texas.

EFT

Electronic File Transfer. A batch process in which electronic transactions are processed overnight in TINS. Errors are reported the next day on non-processed reports, the PMTHIS screen and a daily CSV file.

Entity

The term includes (but is not limited to) an individual, a corporation, an organization, a government or governmental subdivision or agency, a business trust, an estate, a trust, a partnership, an association and any other legal entity.

Hold maintenance

Refers to actions performed for hold-related transactions including setting up, changing and releasing hold records. Processing is done online or via batch.

Hold record

A record that contains information on a state debt for an individual or business entity.

Hold source agency

The agency that reports a state debt owed to that agency.

ITIN

Individual Taxpayer Identification Number. Assigned by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for federal tax reporting by non-resident individuals who do not qualify for a Social Security number (SSN).

Issuing agency

The agency that issues state payments. The term is interchangeable with paying agency.

OAG

Office of the Attorney General.

Online

The process of entering payee, direct deposit and hold records directly into TINS. Online updates are processed in real time.

Offset

The process of applying a held warrant to a payee’s state debt as a payment to reduce or satisfy their held warrants to the liability amount.

Overage

Any amounts remaining from offset warrants after the offset process pays in full a payee’s state debt.

Payee

The term includes but is not limited to an individual, a corporation, an organization, a government or governmental subdivision or agency, a business trust, an estate, distributees of an estate, a surviving spouse, a trust, a partnership, an association and any other legal debtor that may receive payment(s) from the state.

Paying agency

The agency that issues a state payment and is interchangeable with issuing agency.

Payment

A state warrant or direct deposit payment.

State agency

A board, commission, council, committee, department, office, agency or other governmental entity in the executive, legislative or judicial branch of state government. The term includes an institution of higher education but not a public junior college or community college.

State debt

Indebtedness to the state that includes a tax delinquency, child support delinquency, student loan default or other debt that may be defined by a state law.

TIN

Texas Identification Number — a unique 11-digit identification number assigned to a payee by the Comptroller’s office when it issues state payments or records hold information in TINS.

TINS

Texas Identification Number System. The state payee database that maintains payee, payment information and state debtor records.

Universal hold reason code

The three-digit hold reason code that applies and is assigned to more than one agency.

Warrant

A state payment in the form of a paper check.

Warrant hold

The process whereby state payments issued to payees indebted to the state are held by the Comptroller’s office until the debt is satisfied or released by the hold source agency.