The subject of this webinar will be electronic funds transfers and how to leverage NetSuite’s electronic funds transfer (EFT) to streamline your payment processes. We’ll go over a brief definition of EFTs and then jump into a problem overview, listing several pain points you may be going through in your company and end with a demo.

Implement Electronic Funds Transfers in NetSuite

 

Electronic Funds Transfer: Definitions

  • Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT): Process to transfer money from one bank account to another.
  • Automated Clearing House (ACH): An electronic network for financial transactions in the United States. The ACH processes large volumes of credit and debit transactions in batches. The ACH is responsible for accepting the payments from your customer and sending electronic payments to your vendors.
  • Automated Clearing Settlement System (ACSS): Similar to ACH, but for Canadian companies.
  • Processing Gateways: Middlemen that send your payment information to the bank for processing.
  • Positive Bain: An automated fraud detection tool. It matches the account number, check number, and dollar amount of each check presented for payment.
  • Payment File Administration (PFA): A record in NetSuite that holds the information about your payment.

To summarize, EFT is a process that allows you to authorize the transfer of funds from/to your bank accounts. 

There are important distinctions to make when discussing electronic fund transfers with NetSuite. First, there is a free bundle; however, the free bundle will only allow you to modify the positive pay template. Most of the time, modifying the positive pay template will not be enough for your company’s requirements. That is why most customers go with the paid bundle, which allows you to modify every provided template. It also has 50 different templates available. 

Second, there is a feature in NetSuite called the electronic funds transfer feature. This feature simply allows you to transmit the file that is generated from the bundle to your bank. The same is true for the ACH vendor payment. While the electronic fund transfer allows you to take payment from your customer, the ACH vendor payment will allow you to transmit the file to pay your vendors. 

What are Electronic Funds Transfers: Steps Towards a Clean Payment Process

  1. Install the free bundle and test the limitations 
  2. Install the paid bundle (the free bundle is required in order to install the paid bundle)
  3. Request the SuiteApp to be provisioned at NetSuite. You can do this by calling your partner or any representative that you know at NetSuite
  4. Set up your bank account information. This will allow you to define which accounts are going to be credited and which ones are going to be debited
  5. Set up your customers’ bank information. This will allow us to know which bank and which account to transact with
  6. Create transactions
  7. Generate your payment file 
  8. Send to the banking organization
  9. Automate the process with the EFT feature (optional)

What Problems Do Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) Bundles Solve

  • Missed due dates on vendor payments. This can be avoided using scheduled payments.
  • “The check is in the mail” excuse from the customer (also fixed by using scheduled payments).
  • Disorganized or missing approval processes for payments, which is fixed by building yourself custom approval processes within NetSuite.
  • Insufficient control of customer refunds and customer debits.
  • Risk of fraud is mitigated by using the positive pay feature of the bundle.
  • Too much overhead/not enough visibility of your payment statuses.

NetSuite Electronic Funds Transfer Demo

The first thing you're going to notice after you’ve installed and downloaded the bundle is that you're going to get a new center called “payments.” This is where you’ll control most of the features of the bundle. Before we dive deeper into what's available within the sub-tab, let's look at some of the needed configurations. First, let's look at the vendor and what's new on the vendor record. You'll notice that you now have access to the bank payment details subtab. This is where you'll define whether or not your vendor is using EFT payments. This is also where you'll determine the information of the bank that your vendor is using.

Just like on the vendor record, on the customer record, some new information has been added. This information comes in the form of three new subtypes. The first one will hold some general information about your customer’s address. The second one will contain some information about your customer’s debits – whether they use them or not, and what bank accounts are affected. The third one would be about your customer’s credits, which are customer refunds, and will list what bank accounts are affected.  

NetSuite Electronic Funds Transfer Demo

We will now take a look at the screen that lets us manage all those transactions. If we go to payments > payments processing > payment file administration, you’ll get a list of all the requests and their statuses. In the “file processed” column, statuses can vary from being processed, canceled, or processed with errors. You can also see the different payment types that were being used, whether it was a positive bay, an EFT payment, or a direct deposit.

Now we can start looking into how to schedule the creation of that file. As explained earlier, the bundle is only responsible for creating the file and running the approval. We will not be responsible for sending it to the bank. You can do that using the EFT feature.

Payment Schedules

The next topic we’ll be covering is payment schedules. To create a schedule, you have to go to payments > setup > payment schedule and select “New.” Once there, you can decide what name you want to call the payment schedule. You can put the time zone, the frequency of the event, the event type, and the day. 

It is also possible that you won’t want to use a schedule to generate these files. To do this, you can go to payments > bank file generation > generate bill payment. 

On this page, you can see which company bank you’ll be paying. Then you’ll have to define a saved search, what date the file is to be processed, and put an EFT file reference note to differentiate it from other files.

Positive Pay Feature

Let's now take a look at the positive pay feature. This is basically your feature to avoid getting frauded using check alterations. 

On the page, you’ll see several fields. The first field that you're going to see is the bank account. By selecting a bank account, you will be pulling all transactions that were related to that account. Those transactions are going to be within the selected date range. You can also select a cheque range. Once you click “submit,” you'll be given information based on your selections. 

If you’re looking at installing the free bundle and entering your bank detail records, as well as importing vendor/customer bank details – this is something GURUS Solutions can help you with. On the other hand, If you’re looking into downloading the paid bundle, we can help you with updating the EFT templates, creating schedules and batches (using NetSuite saved searches), and creating an approval process using our workflow. 

Working with GURUS Solutions involves creating a partnership with us, whereby we’ll work together to help you achieve your business goals. With over a decade of experience, our proven processes are here to support you along the way during your project. We also offer ongoing account management in case you need support beyond any implementations.   
 

Request More Info About Electronic Funds Transfers in NetSuite