Bulk Bpay Payments for Macquarie Bank – REST Professional

Overview

You may now pay your creditors by Bpay instead of cheque or EFT. This is particularly useful for paying bills such as water, council rates, electricity, phone, strata levies and any other creditor who has a Bpay biller number. REST simply creates a Bpay file to upload to the bank in the same way as we currently upload the ABA file for EFT payments. You will have to set up the creditor with a biller code and add the Bpay reference numbers (Customer Reference Numbers) to the properties. When you process creditor disbursements, REST will allocate the bills to cheque, EFT or Bpay depending on the creditor payment method. Then when you pay the creditors, the Bpay payments will be added to a temporary Bpay file in the same way as we add the EFT payments now and you can create the final Bpay file at the same time as you create the ABA file. You will then upload two files to your bank, one for the EFT payments and one for the Bpay payments.

This is currently only available for Macquarie Bank customers but we will add this facility for other banks as it become available.

Set up company details

Check that you have your Rockend Company ID entered (you can find this on the top of the REST screen to the right of ’Help’ on the menu bar). If this field is blank, please contact Rockend Support who will give you the code. You must have this entered before you can run bulk Bpay.
Select Other > Utilities > Company Details > General Tab
Choose Macquarie Bank in the ‘Bulk Bpay bank’ dropdown list.
Enter the bulk Bpay path. This should be on the same computer or server as the Payments ABA file but in a different folder. Click on Browse, select the drive you require and click on ‘New Folder to create a new path. You should call it something like ‘Bpay’

Example: If your ABA file is saved in c:\rest\MBL.ABA

Click on browse and browse for the c:\rest folder
Click on ‘New Folder’ and call it ‘Bpay’
REST will display the folder name of c:\rest\Bpay

Set up creditors

Each creditor that is to be paid by Bpay must have the payment method of ‘Bpay’; and the biller code entered. The biller code should be on the bill from the creditor.

Select Files > Creditor or click on the creditors icon
Choose your creditor and select the Payments Tab
Change the payment method to ‘Bpay’ and enter the payee name and the biller code
Save the creditor

Set up properties

The new Regular Payments Tab on the property screen holds the creditors that you pay for this property along with the Bpay reference number. You may set up the creditors and the Bpay reference number here in the regular payments tab or when you post a disbursement to a creditor who is paid by Bpay, REST will offer to save the details in the regular payments tab for you.

To set up on the property

Select Files > Property Regular Payments Tab
Click on the ‘Add’ button
In the Creditor Alpha field, search for the creditor you wish to add
Add any comment you like
Add the Bpay reference number. This can be found as the customer reference number or account number on the bill.

To add Bpay details from the disbursement screen

Enter the property and creditor alpha codes as usual. If the creditor has a payment method of Bpay, you will see a field for the Bpay reference number. When the disbursement has been posted if that creditor or the Bpay reference does not exist on the property, REST will offer to save the details for you.

Paying Creditors

Process

When you pay creditors with a payment method of Bpay, REST creates a temporary file for the Bpay payments. To create the file to upload to the bank: -

Select Transactions > Create file for upload to bank > Bulk Bpay payments

REST will save the file in the folder specified in company details.

Navigate to the file location (via Windows Explorer), where the Bpay file has been created
Right click on the intended file to upload > Rename > Add an extension, eg .bpay to the end of the file name > Save

This will ensure the file can be uploaded (as Macquarie Banking online will reject all files with no file extension). The file will be named something like ROCKE55888727000006.bpay

Upload the file to the bank using your banking software

Reversing the Bulk Bpay file and the Bpay payments

If you have a wrong biller code or wrong reference number, the bank will reject the entire bulk Bpay file and give you an explanation of the error. If this happens you must:

Cancel the bulk Bpay file by selecting Transactions > Cancelled Transactions > Reverse Bulk Bpay and entering the bulk Bpay number (found in the Cash Payments Report)
Select Transactions > Cancelled Transactions > Reverse Bpay and cancel the transaction that has caused the problem.
If it was an incorrect biller code, change the biller code on the creditor, rerun the creditor payments and create the Bpay file again.

If it was the biller reference that was wrong, cancel the transaction, post the disbursement again, re-run the creditor payments and re-create the Bpay file.