How to create BPAY batch payments

BPAY batch is a new type of Payment Journal in Wiise. With a BPAY batch payment, you can make bulk BPAY payments through your online banking portal with your normal bank.

You'll need to record the details once against vendors and invoices and then the suggest payments function will import all 'ready to pay' invoices into a journal. 

You can then export the payments into a batch file in the appropriate format for your bank. Then you can log in to your online banking and upload the file for processing.

If you've used the EFT-ABA payment journal process, then this is almost identical—the only difference is that BPAY is used to make the payments.

Currently, the following banks are supported by Wiise:

• Commonwealth Bank of Australia
• National Australia Bank
• Westpac
• Macquarie Bank
• Bankwest

To enable BPAY batch, you'll first need to turn on BPAY for the bank account you wish to make BPAY payments from. 

• Open the Bank Account card for this account in Wiise and scroll to the down to the Transfer section, then find the BPAY Batch Payments checkbox and turn it on. This will create a new payment journal called BPAY, followed by the bank account name.

You can have multiple accounts set up for BPAY batch. But you can only pay from any one account in any one batch file. If you turn on BPAY batch for multiple accounts you'll see a BPAY Payment Journals for each account. Use whichever journal you want to pay from when you create the batch.

For NAB accounts, 2 additional fields are needed to create a batch—Customer ID and Customer Short Name. You should be able to find these values in your account documentation or contact NAB for the details. You'll need to complete these fields before generating a BPAY batch for NAB accounts.

For BPAY bills, you need a Biller Code and Customer Reference Number called CRN. You should be able to find these on each bill.

There are 2 separate structures for BPAY billers: Fixed and Variable CRN.

• For a Fixed CRN biller, your CRN never changes. Every bill you receive from that Biller will be paid using the same CRN.
• Variable CRN billers are a little different. Each bill from this biller will have a different CRN and it will need to be entered for each bill/invoice.

To set up a biller, follow these steps:

1. First, add a vendor as normal, or open an existing Vendor Card.
2. Then set the payment method to BPAY-Batch.
   Note: there's also an option called BPAY Manual—make sure you haven't selected this option as it won't allow you to enter BPAY information.
3. A series of new fields will now appear under a heading called BPAY.
4. Enter the biller code and the biller's name will be retrieved from BPAY to make sure you've got the correct biller code.
5. The system will tell you if this is a Fixed or Variable Biller.

a) For a Fixed Biller:

Enter the CRN on the Vendor card. This value will be used for all Invoices for this Vendor, and you won't need to enter it again. 

b) For a Variable Biller:

1. You'll need to leave the CRN field blank on the Vendor card.
2. Enter the CRN on each Purchase Order/Invoice to make sure the correct bill payment details are used in the batch file.
3. You can enter the CRN on a Purchase Order or Purchase Invoice.
4. You can edit a CRN on a Posted Purchase Invoice or in the Vendor Ledger Entries screen if an error was made before posting the invoice.

If you need to add multiple billers for a single vendor, that's no problem.

Adding more than one biller is useful for a couple of reasons:

• Multiple bills from a single vendor: for example, you need to pay 3 mobile bills to one vendor, but each mobile bill has its own Customer Reference Number (possibly the mobile number itself).
• Multiple biller codes for a single vendor: for example, a large vendor may have separate biller codes for separate divisions or functions, but you want to store them as a single vendor in Wiise.

You can create multiple biller profiles in both these cases at the same time for a single biller. Here's how.

1. Start in the vendor card. To set up multiple profiles select the […] at the end of the Biller Code field. 
2. Alternatively, you can add a new set of Biller Codes/CRNs on the vendor card and each will be saved as a new profile automatically.   

How to add a biller profile to an invoice

When you create an invoice, you can choose any of the profiles set up for that vendor. Each invoice can have a different profile even if they're in the same batch. Note that you can find the default profile used for each vendor’s invoices in the BPAY fields on the vendor card.   

For a variable biller code, you can only have one profile with the Biller Code completed and the CRN needs to be blank. When you select this profile on an invoice, you'll need to enter the CRN separately for each invoice as it's likely to be different every time.  

You can delete or give your Biller Profiles a brief description. Simply go to the window that appears when you select the […] button in the Biller Code field on the vendor page. 

Follow these steps to create a BPAY batch file:

1. First, open the BPAY payment journal and either manually add or select suggest payments to add all posted invoices which have the BPAY details complete.
2. You can review all the Biller Codes, CRNs and Payment amounts in the journal before attempting to create the batch file.
3. Then select the Generate BPAY File option from the Process menu.
4. Your payments will be checked against the BPAY system to make sure they're correct. 
   1. If any issues are found with any of the payments, you'll see a summary of the issues and a short explanation for each.
   2. Any errors will be highlighted in red to make them easier to resolve. An error can happen if the payment is too big, small or incorrect, or from incorrect or invalid CRN values.
5. If no errors are found in your batch, then the batch file will be generated and downloaded to your computer. You should see it appear in your browser where file downloads normally appear.

Note: No payments have been made at this point. Wiise doesn't make the payments or schedule them with your bank, it only creates a file that includes all the relevant information for your bank to make these payments. So, make sure you upload this file to your bank to make the payments.

Wiise generates the payment instructions for your bank, but it can't process them. You'll need to send these instructions to your bank for processing.

The process is slightly different for each bank but usually follows the same structure:

1. Log in to your online banking platform
2. Locate the Bulk payment or BPAY Payment upload option
3. Upload the file that Wiise generated above
4. Review the payments
5. Approve the payments for processing
6. Your bank will then execute each of the BPAY payments included in the file uploaded

If there are any issues encountered after exporting a batch file from Wiise, you can cancel the export in the Payment Journal and export the batch again.

This might be if the file was lost or one of the payment amounts was found to be incorrect once uploaded to your online banking, for example.

• Open the payment journal and choose Process Cancel BPAY file…

This will unlock the journal for editing again and allow the batch to be exported again. Take care to ensure that the correct file is then uploaded to your bank for processing.

If required, a BPAY batch register is kept each time a payment file is created. This is linked to ledger entries once the journal is posted so that you can see a history of what has been paid.

Search for BPAY Register to review any previously exported batch files and associated payments.

BPAY Batch only applies to invoices that are created AFTER you've entered the BPAY details against the vendor AND you've set the vendor Payment Method to BPAY-Batch.

Only new invoices created after you've set the vendor up for BPAY Batch will be included in a batch. So if you have existing posted invoices, you'll need to finish processing these as you would have before BPAY Batch. 

Make sure you don't use the BPAY Payment method, as this would show you're making a manual BPAY payment for the invoice. Wiise can't include these invoices in a BPAY Batch. To use the Wiise BPAY option to pay a vendor, always select BPAY-Batch.