Creating an Electronic Payment file for outgoing payments

This function is used for payment types of Vendor Payments and Cash Payments. Payments created through the Dealerlogic Wages system have their own electronic payment file method.

In order to pay your vendors electronically two things need to happen:

1.The payment transaction is recorded in Dealerlogic against the appropriate purchases or bills.

2.The payment is generated via internet banking.

After you've completed step 1, Dealerlogic can help you with step 2 by creating an electronic payment file (ABA file) for your bank to process.

Electronic payment files contain the payment information for your ban to process such as the bank account details of the recipient, the date of the payment, the amount and any reference details. Files are prepared using the Australian Bankers' Association (ABA) file format.

Once you have prepared an electronic payment file you can send it to your bank for processing by "importing the file" into either a banking software application or your internet banking.

Before you can prepare an electronic payment file you need to complete the banking details on your Dealership client card. Go to Program Config and edit the card linked to the main Trading entity. Complete both the Bank Account and Electronic Banking tabs. Note that if you have not been issued a DE User Id (you'll only have one if you use a software application, not internet banking) any numeric entry here is valid. Use your internet banking logon if you wish.

Additionally you'll need a clearing account to process electronic payments. That's because each payment you create doesn't come out of your bank account individually, but instead the total of the payment file will appear as one lump sum. Create a new account in your Chart of Accounts in the assets area named something like Electronic Payments. Make sure it's designated a bank account. This is not an actual bank account, but it's where the individual payment entries will be processed to, and then the total cleared out.

As noted above the first step is to create the payment transaction in Dealerlogic. This is what you are already doing when you create a Vendor Payment or Cash Payment transaction but instead of selecting the actual bank account, select the clearing bank account you created earlier. Additionally ensure the payment method selected is EFT. Only payments with EFT payment method will be recognised in the electronic payment file.

Open the Electronic Payment window and select the bank account that the payments were allocated to - your clearing account. Enter the date that you want your bank to process the payments, and then enter the date range of the payment transactions you have recorded. All EFT payment types within that date range will be displayed. Note that Dealerlogic doesn't know if the payment has previously been selected in an Electronic Payment file, so make sure you don't pay someone twice.

Using the tick box in the Process column select which payments are to be included in the Electronic Payment file. Whatever appears in the Ref column forms part of the file and will appear on the payee's account statement. All selected payments will be checked for valid bank details and if the information is incomplete you will see it on the screen. Use the Edit button to correct the bank details on that payee's client card. Check the Total Payments amount is correct then press Create. You will be prompted to specify a file name and path, and will need these in order to locate the file later. Ensure the file extension is left as .aba.

Open your banking software or internet banking and use the Import File function (check with your own bank if unsure how to do this) to locate and import the file previously created. Check and authorise it for payment.

To complete the process, create a Transfer Money transaction to move the total amount of the payment from the actual bank account to the clearing account. If your file contained all available electronic payment transactions then the clearing account balance should reduce to zero.