BPAY creditors have two key pieces of information needed to generate the correct bank payment file at disbursement time; the Biller code and the Customer Reference Number (CRN). Biller codes are set directly on a Contact, and CRNs are set on a combination of the Contact and a Property or Area.
Setting a Biller code against a BPAY Creditor
There are two options:
1. You can navigate directly to the Creditor Contact page, by searching in the main Contacts list page, and scroll down to the Payments section. You can directly enter the Biller code in the relevant field, and Save to confirm.
2. You can set the Biller code when setting the CRNs against a Property or Area - see below.
Setting CRNs against a Contact and Property or Area
Navigate to a Property, and click on Contacts on the left hand menu; then the BPAY Creditors tab.
You'll see a list of any BPAY Creditors already associated to this Property. To add a new BPAY Creditor, click Add Creditor.
This will pop up a Find Contacts screen. Type the name or Biller code in the search bar on the left, then click on the Contact you want to add BPAY details for.
Now you can enter the Creditor's BPAY Details. The following screen has several elements:
1. Creditor Name - clicking this will open the Contact page in a new browser tab
2. BPAY biller code - this will pull through the Biller code as saved against the Contact (described at the beginning of this article). If no Biller code yet exists, it can be typed in this field and will save back to the Contact record.
3. CRN allocated to: The choices are Property or Area. This field is key for setting up your creditor correctly. Ask yourself: does this creditor invoice you for the Property as a whole; or do they send separate invoices that relate to distinct Areas within the Property? If you select Property, you can nominate CRNs that sit against the Property, as per the first screenshot below. If you select Area, you can nominate CRNs that sit against all Areas in the Property, as per the second screenshot below.
4. CRN: Type the CRN here. Once you click out of this field, the CRN is saved.
5. More actions: You can add subsequent CRNs here if you need to store more than one CRN option against that Property or Area. If you add multiple CRNs here, you'll need to select which one is correct when you create an Expense Invoice for this Creditor and Property or Area.
6. Create Area: If you choose to allocate CRNs by Area, and you need to create a new Area for the Property, you can click Create Area here, and enter the details required. Once the new Area is created, you can immediately enter a CRN for it.
Once you're finished, click Close and you'll return to the list of BPAY Creditors on that Property.
More actions from the main BPAY Creditors List page:
1. Click on Manage creditor's BPAY details if you need to edit or check a Creditor's BPAY details. This will open the same screens shown above where you can read, edit or delete any Biller codes or CRNs.
2. Click on the three dots more actions button to Remove a Creditor from this list if it no longer needed. This will not delete the Contact, just remove the Contact from this Property's BPAY Creditors list.
For more information please refer to Manage BPAY creditors Video.