As part of application administration, a maximum amount can be set up for a delivery method, so that no payments over this amount can be made by the delivery method. Any payments that exceed this maximum amount will be suspended. For example, the organization may have a policy that no payments over $100 can be made by cash. If John Smith was scheduled to receive a payment for $120 in cash, the payment would be automatically suspended until the organization had an opportunity to investigate the reason that the limit was exceeded.
The case nominee will not receive a suspended payment unless the payment is approved by the organization. Approving a suspended payment overrides the maximum amount limitation and allows the payment to be issued. Over and underpayments are still created on cases with suspended payments regardless of whether the suspended payment has been approved or not. This is due to the fact that the over or underpayment may be related to several payments that were made over a period of time, of which some may not be suspended and are therefore valid. Also, the expectation is that agencies will deal with the situation in which a payment has been suspended in a timely manner; otherwise the client will not get paid. If the agency is not in a position to act on a suspended payment quickly or they do not want to create over or under payments on cases with suspended payments, they could choose to suspend the case itself.