Metro 2 Account Type Code 73: Government Employee Advance

Specification

Code	73
Meaning	Government Employee Advance
Field	Account Type (Field 15)
Record	Base Segment
Length / position	2 chars · 84–85
Category	Government Obligations
CRRG reference	CRRG Exhibits 1 & 2 (Account Type Codes)

The relationship behind the debt is employment, not lending. The agency advanced funds in its capacity as employer.
Recovery is commonly by payroll deduction, which means the account can be current every cycle while never receiving a conventional payment.
Distinct from a direct government loan (67 or 68), which is made under a lending program to a borrower rather than to an employee.
Does NOT mean an overpayment of salary. A payroll overpayment the employee must return is an overpayment (70), because the money was paid in error rather than advanced deliberately.
The obligation usually survives separation from employment, at which point payroll recovery stops and a repayment schedule replaces it.

1A government employer reports a travel advance that was not liquidated by an expense report and is being repaid by payroll deduction.
2An agency reports a salary advance being recovered over several pay periods.
3An agency reports an advance that became fully due when the employee separated and is now on a monthly repayment schedule.
4An agency reports an advance that was repaid in full and closes the tradeline at a zero balance.
5An agency reports an advance that went unpaid after separation and is now delinquent.

Report the advanced amount as the Original Loan Amount and the unrecovered portion as the Current Balance.
Report payroll recoveries as payments in the payment fields so the balance movement and the payment history agree.
When employment ends, report the new repayment terms in Terms Duration and Scheduled Monthly Payment rather than leaving payroll-period terms in place.
Do not report employment details in the credit obligation fields. Employment information, where furnished at all, belongs in the N1 segment.
Do not recode to an overpayment code because recovery became difficult. The origin of the obligation is what selects the code.

A file can be structurally valid and still be wrong. These are the cross-field conditions Account Type Code 73 has to satisfy.

Portfolio Type must be I (Installment).
Portfolio Type I requires Terms Duration and Scheduled Monthly Payment. Where recovery is by payroll deduction, Terms Frequency should reflect the actual pay cycle: B (Biweekly), S (Semimonthly), W (Weekly) or M (Monthly), not a default M that contradicts the deduction schedule.
Credit Limit must be blank or zero.
Actual Payment Amount should record the deduction actually taken in the cycle, and Current Balance must fall by a consistent amount.
Employment data, if reported at all, ships in the N1 segment; it never belongs in the Base Segment name or address fields. An N1 segment shipped with no populated employment values is an empty-segment failure, so omit it rather than send it blank.
On separation, changing Terms Frequency and Scheduled Monthly Payment is a legitimate prospective change and does not reset the Date of First Delinquency if one is already set.
Amount Past Due should be zero while payroll deduction is running as agreed, even though a balance remains outstanding.
ECOA reporting is individual: an employee advance is personal to the employee, so a joint ECOA code is a contradiction.