There are benefits to using a B2B third-party payment processor. It can save you time and money and improve your cash flow.
Plus, most payment processors offer multiple methods for processing payments, including EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer), credit or virtual cards, wire transfers, and ACH.
Payment processors also offer web portals to make it easy to manage payments and easy for your suppliers to establish accounts and accept your payments. Many of your suppliers may already have accounts with the B2B payment processors, so all you have to do is search for a supplier and link them to your account. If your supplier is not available in the processor’s database, they can quickly establish an account.
How the process works
For the most part, preparing payments for a third party processor is the same as if you are printing the checks in house, only you “print” them to a file. However, there are some differences.
You select invoices for payment in the same way. In QAD, select the invoices for payment in the Supplier Payment Selection Create menu (28.9.4.1). You can choose all invoices, invoices for specific dates, or an individual invoice. From the list of selected invoices for payment, you can add more or delete invoices as is needed.
When your selection list is finalized, confirm the payments through the Supplier Payment Selection Confirm menu (28.9.4.5).
Some QAD users employ the Supplier Payment Selection Execute menu (28.9.4.6) to convert confirmed payments that use the same execution bank into export files and send to the bank via EDI eCommerce. This process option may be available from some B2B processing services but involves a lot of EDI setup and additional maintenance costs.
The Supplier Check Print menu (28.9.9.3) is used by most QAD users to create the check numbers and payment information and to print the actual checks. The Supplier Check Print menu (28.9.9.3), assigns system pre-printed numbers that correspond with the pre-printed numbers on the physical checks and links the check number to the AP check payment. You can select any AP check numbering sequence valid in the current entity.
A third party B2B payment service may require payment instructions in a different format than the few standard bank formats available in QAD. If you have completed the check print process, but before you physically print the checks, you can extract the data to a file for transfer to a payment processor.
Using a third-party payment processor requires that you set up a different check numbering system in QAD. One way to do that is to keep track of different check number schema and change the “Next Pre-Printed Number” field to the correct sequence before each check run. Another way is to set up a different Payment Format Name with the same bank account and payment format to track the second sequence of check numbers. The would require that suppliers be updated to the new format as the default rather than the original check print format. In either case, the process is to run Supplier Check Print to create all the required information but not print the checks – instead, view them to a page or a text file. Then, run the custom program Extract Check Payment to XML (90.28.1) which uses the payment selection number (batch) to extract the check run information from the system and format the output into an XML file. A CSV file will also be created at the same time, and this file can be used to load your data back into the system to reconcile the payments. Since the total amount gets extracted at one time by the B2B payment service, it is just as easy to mark the whole batch as complete using Supplier Payment Mass Change (28.9.3.5) and changing the status on all selected payments to be paid.
Another feature of the Extract program is that in addition to the standard QAD output options, the program allows you to email the XML file to any email address supplied. Typically the file is emailed to the user for internal review, but could be external as well, and then forward to an external B2B payment service after saving a copy as a backup. The email includes the XML file as an attachment and also the CSV data included in the email as reference.
The extracted file is then forwarded to the B2B payment service and a total payment amount wired to complete the bank transfer is set up to cover the payment.
Now, distributing individual payments is in the hands of your payment processor. No more checks to write, envelopes to stuff and postage to spend!
We offer full service implementing this process. For more information contact us!
