Our bank offers a product from FIS (a common vendor for the banking industry) called Integrated Payables. We send them a file that contains a line with the recipient’s name, address, and optionally their routing and account number and a list of invoices we are paying.
This tool simplifies payments by automatically converting to ACH, mailed paper check, or virtual credit card using the information they keep on file. This is basically an automated version of a consumer “Bill Pay” service that most banks offer.
This tool expects to receive data in a CSV-like format, but unfortunately it is not a direct CSV export or NACHA file so I’m struggling on where to start with an export scenario. Additionally, I would like to avoid having a customization developed if there’s any way to do this natively or with an ISV soluition that already exists.
There are 3 classifications of lines:
- Summary field that contains the information about the account we are paying FROM. This is largely static and always at the first line of the file. Every transaction is paid out of this account unless there is another summary record later in the file (we do not intend to do that, so we will only have one)
- Payment Record (Payment Method - CHK for automatic or ACH if we want to pass a specific routing and account number - most will be CHK)
- Remittance Record, which contains the invoice number we are paying to, memo fields, payment amounts and discount amounts.
The format looks roughly like this. We have a specification file which explains each of the fields that are required:
S,01/01/2024,”Our Company Name”,,1 MAIN STREET,,CITY,ST,99999,US,RoutingNumber,AccountNumber
P,CHK,117192,49483.74,V100001,Vendor 1 ,,PO BOX 99999,,,DALLAS,TX,75373-5916,US,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
I,1285173,03/18/2022,27238 ,19584.00,0.00,19584.00
I,1285678,03/22/2022,27381 Memo Field Here,8700.00,0.00,8700.00
P,ACH,117195,34951.00,V100002, Vendor 2,,4000 Second Street,,,Kinston,NC,28504,US,,,,,01,053101121,000999999999,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
I,5105,03/22/2022,27591 ,34951.00,0.00,34951.00So this isn’t an Excel, CSV, or ACH provider for the export scenario.
Is it possible to create a file like this using any pre-defined providers without a major customization? Has anyone here worked with this payable platform or anything that processes data in a similar format? Unfortunately only about 1/10 of our payments are ACH, so simply using a NACHA file is not likely going to work for us.
