BPAY & SAP A/R

What is BPAY

BPAY is an electronic bill payment system in Australia which enables payments to be made through a financial institution’s online, mobile or telephone banking facility to organizations which are registered BPAY billers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BPAY

BPAY Process (End-to-End)

BPAY Process : Process-Steps Explained :

1. BPAY Biller (Your Organization) Register for BPAY Feature thru their Bank
2. BPAY Biller (Your Organization) receives the BPAY Biller-#
3. Against your Customer’s Sales-order & your product-Delivery, Your organization sends to your customer an invoice displaying a BPAY logo, your unique BPAY Biller Code and their Customer Reference Number (CRN).
4. Your customer logs into their Internet banking site or dials their telephone banking number and follows the prompts to make a BPAY payment
   1. Logs on to their online, mobile, or over-the-phone banking service,
   2. Look for the BPAY logo and Biller Code on your bill
   3. Enter the required information – usually the biller code, customer reference number, payment amount and date.
   4. Pays the bill.
   5. NOTE : Some institutes allow paying the BPAY Bill-Payment thru Credit-card. There may be additional charges applicable to use this facility.
5. The customer’s financial institution validates the payment and gives the customer a receipt number.
6. Your customer’s payment details are forwarded to your financial institution via BPAY.
7. A/R Clearing – Along with EBS, you also need to process the BPAY statement which would contain Customer-wise BPAYments details

How long does it take for a BPAY to go through?

If your payment is made on a bank business day before 6pm (Sydney / Melbourne time) it will be debited from your account instantly and processed that day. The biller will acknowledge the payment as having been made that day and should process the payment the next banking business day.

As a BPAY Biller, the benefit to your Organization

If you’re a business considering the use of BPAY, there are a wide range of benefits involved in using it such as improving cash flow, decreasing costs and reducing administration time. Cleared funds are deposited directly into your account each banking business day.

As a BPAY Consumer (Your Organization’s Customer) – the benefit to your Customer

Convenience and flexibility, Saves time, Provides confidence in using a trusted environment, Control over when payments are made, an easy way to record and track payments that have been made, offers flexibility

Does BPAY have any limitations?

There are a number of things to consider before deciding if this is right for you. Some of the limitations of BPAY include:

• It is not always free: most banks and credit unions accommodate a set number of ‘free’ BPAY transactions each month, then charge after the free threshold is surpassed. While individual BPAY transactions are seemingly innocuous at 15-60 cents each, they could add up quickly!
• Incorrect payments: every week hundreds of Australians send cash via BPAY to the wrong biller, or with an incorrect customer reference number. Such transactions need to be recalled by your bank and a bank trace fee could be charged.
• Credit cards: as mentioned above, many companies don’t allow credit payments via BPAY, and if you do pay, you could be incurring extraordinary fees/surcharges.

SAP & BPAY Integration : Questions to Consider :

1. Which Additional G/L & Clearing Accounts for the process
2. BPAY Statement processing in addition to standard EBS
3. Surcharge for allowing BPAY payment thru Credit-Card
4. Fees for usage of BPAY Service
5. ??

Looking forward to hear your experience and tips for SAP & BPAY Processing.