This 30-minute webinar includes a demo of Continia Payment Management. It focuses on how the solution integrates with Business Central and how using Continia Payment Management can ensure great quality of payment data and provide a high level of security throughout the entire payment process.
Transcript
0:04
Thank you for joining today’s webinar. We’ll be starting shortly.
0:37
More and more people joining. We’re starting very soon. Thanks for joining us today, everyone.
1:15
Give it a few more minutes, Thomas, and then we’ll get started.
1:19
Yes, Great.
1:26
OK.
1:38
OK so just gone mid-day, let’s get started.
1:43
So, thank you everybody today for joining us for this Payment Management webinar in conjunction with Continia.
1:51
Thomas here is going to be going through the slides and then afterwards he’ll be doing the demo for us.
1:59
You can move to the next slide. So, my name is Danusia Jolliffe, I’m the Marketing Director here at TVision and we’ve been working with Continia for a long time now using their various solutions. And today, specifically, we’ll be talking about Payment Management.
2:14
Thomas, I’ll get him to introduce himself shortly, just before he does the demo.
2:21
Yes. So, I can shortly just introduce myself. My name is Thomas Droob. I’m a Senior Solution Manager for the Payment Management product. I’m based out of Denmark. Been working with the product actually myself for the last 25 years. It’s Continia’s oldest product.
2:39
So, I’ve been working with it as a user in the finance department, and now, on the other side of the table, managing and showing the products to customers and partners around the world. Brilliant, OK. Thank you.
2:58
So, on the agenda today, we’re going to be talking about ways to handle payments easily and safely. And Thomas will be going through the vendor card, payment journals, bank account reconciliation and bank accounts. Now, if anyone has any questions throughout, please do ask, I can stop as we go through. If you need a bit more of an in-depth answer, then we can talk to you offline afterwards. But, as I said, either put the questions in the question box or in the chat. And I’ll ask Thomas at an appropriate time as we’re going through the demo, so I’ll be paying attention to them. Thomas over to you.
3:28
Thank you.
3:31
So, we’re going to be talking about Continia Payment Management, which is actually in the news release that we’re going to the UK market for this product. What Payment Management is, is, it’s a product that can do, like, direct integration with the bank, doing payments, but also the reconciliation of the statements afterwards.
3:55
What I would do now is don’t talk that much about PowerPoints, but just directed jumping to the solution here and show what they can do.
4:05
So, what we have done, we have integrated with what we call like an open banking provider in the UK called Yapoli, which has all the banks in the UK.
4:15
And so, what we can do then is, then, we can integrate that directly in Business Central. So, when we are sending payments, we will direct the payment to the bank, you approve it directly and everything will be updated within Business Central.
4:33
So, to start with, I will just show on the vendor card what have we added of different functionalities here.
4:42
Then I will go and do some payments into payment journals. So, how is the integration working and what can we do?
4:49
Afterwards, we will do some bank reconciliation of what we have done.
4:54
And after that, I will show the posted bank statement, but also some of the updated fields that we do on the bank card and some of the options there.
5:05
So, the vendor card, just go into a vendor.
5:12
Thomas, we have our first question. Is it available on NAV or is it just on Business Central?
5:18
It is available only on what we call the app version to Business Central 15 and forward, for Cloud and On-Premise.
5:29
Yes.
5:30
So, on the vendor card, if you go to the section payments, we have added some different functionality. The first one here is skip payments, which means that if you somehow have some payments done, that are not been sent directly from Business Central – it could be a direct withdrawal from a credit card or anything, anywhere else.
5:49
We can hit skip payments. This means when we do the suggestion in the payment journal, we will never see these invoices from this certain vendor.
5:58
Also, what we work with is something called balance account.
6:01
So, we can have like different currencies for example.
6:05
So, if we have set up the different balance accounts based on different currencies for different bank account, it could be that you have like one for British Pound, one for Euros, one for US Dollars. Then we can set it up in general based on the currency. Or we can also change it on each vendor card. Say this specific vendors should also always be paid from this balancing account.
6:29
Of course, they are a preferred bank account and this will be updated when setting up a payment management, take the preferred bank account and put it into this field.
6:38
Then, what we have also added is in standard Business Central, there are some payment method codes for payment management. We have created our own and this is to have complete control of the complete process in Business Central.
6:52
So, this means, in the setup of payment management, we will translate the existing payment method to payment management, payment method.
7:01
So, this also means if the bank changes something and if something is changed, we can immediately push it out to you. So, when you’re doing the suggestion and try to do some payments into payment journal, you will have a notification saying the bank have changed some setup, will you update in your Business Central – Yes or No. Of course, is a good idea to say, yes.
7:22
But, it’s to have, to have complete control of the payment process.
7:29
Also, there are some allow summarising payments. This means, of course, you can do like a VAT payment, but you can also within each vendor, summarise a lot of different payment lines. So, for example, instead of doing one payment per invoice, you could like summarise those line into one payment line with five invoices and pay that in one amount.
7:53
This can be done by switching on this functionality on the vendor card. And we also have some functionalities to do it automatically when doing the suggestion and payment journal.
8:04
Also, we have this button here called Exclude Credit Memos.
8:07
When summarising, so if you don’t want to have to create memos in summarised payment list line, we can do that as well.
8:17
We have cost types, so if you’re doing like a payment abroad or something like that, where you have some fees in your bank and receiver of the money, have some fees in their bank. You can decide here whether to have like shared cost, who should take the fees and put it in and it will be sent with the bank with the payment.
8:38
Also, this notification field out here.
8:41
Just show more. We have the option to send an e-mail notification like a remittance advice so for…
8:51
For different payment lines. We can send an e-mail notification to the vendor saying we have paid this amount to you today.
8:59
This can also be automated on post, meaning that when you post the lines into payment journal, we can send it, or in the job queue. So, at a certain time of day, we can just send e-mail notification.
9:11
So, if you want to use this, we have this field here – I want to bank an e-mail. This means that they of course would have the notification in the bank, but also, they can receive an e-mail with notification. And you just need to fill in the recipient e-mail in this field here.
9:28
So, for some payments, there are some of the requirements in the bank, for example, the name of, the length of the name, the address, could be rejected in the bank because the name is too long.
9:42
So, what we have created this, this alternative vendor information, meaning, they put in some of the name, could also be there were some special characters in the name of the vendor that the bank doesn’t allow. Then you just put in the name without that special character.
9:58
What happened and when do I need to fill this in? This is, when you post the invoices, we have a validation process going on, meaning that we validate certain fields on the vendor card and on the actual document.
10:12
So, for example, if you don’t have filled out that the bank information on the vendor card. Could also be what I said before, the name is too long, or other different things that could do, that this actual document or invoice is not validated correctly.
10:29
This is also to ensure, when we sent the payment that is not rejected in the bank. We want to handle everything in Business Central before we send it to the bank.
10:39
So, if I just try and create a new purchase invoice here.
10:47
We have this validation window here. So, if something goes wrong, you will have an exact message of what you need to correct in order for this invoice to be posted. If you have our other product Document Capture, for example, this validation process will also be integrated together with Document Capture on old purchase documents.
11:07
So, I don’t want to post an invoice, because I already did it in advance.
11:15
Now, what we can do is we can go to the payment journal.
11:21
We have created our own payment journal.
11:24
We have yet added certain fields, for example, a status column.
11:28
As you will see in a minute, when I do the suggestion, this will change on each of the lines.
11:33
So, I’ll just start by suggesting vendor payments.
11:40
And click OK.
11:42
So, now, can see, there’s a lot of lines with this status valid on it. This means that it has been validated and we actually do a second validation in the payment journal. If something should have changed, this should still be validated. So, valid means it’s ready to be sent to the bank. The next status, when we send it, will be sent. Of course, this will automatically update when we send it to the bank.
12:05
When the bank has received it, will receive a status code back. So, if we change to processing, meaning that the bank has received it, it’s in process ready to be paid.
12:17
It could be that you sent like a batch where some of the payments are in the future. So, maybe some will be paid tomorrow or the day after and then it would be in process until it has actually been paid; and then we can update the status on the line till paid.
12:35
Also, we have out here where we always can click on the payment status. So, see what happens, now it is valid. So, in a minute when I send it, it will be updated with the second line in here. So, everything can see, where in the process is this payment.
12:52
If you have our other product installed together with Payment Management Document Capture, you are able to see like, a small fact box out here. But you can see the actual invoice, that you have processed to Document Capture. So, if you want to look at it before validating to sending the payments, you can do that directly from the payment journal.
13:13
Also, should there be an error when do the suggestion, we could have a status of invalid.
13:21
This was, make an error message and the fact box here, the payment file error. It could be that I do some suggestions today, but I don’t send the payment. Tomorrow, I will go in and send them. Then it would be updated to invalid because the date is, for example, today. But if I tried to send them tomorrow, I need to update the date and validate the payment once again by changing the date and validate the payment by pushing this button.
13:50
Also, on each of the line, if there were some notification on it and in this environment, I don’t have any, then, you will be able to see the different notification lines that will be sent with the payment. And this is also what we build into the e-mail notification. So, we have certain ways of setting this notification. So, you can do like, a standard notification for all vendors. Or you can also on the vendor card, say, this vendor has to have a different notification.
14:21
So, I don’t want to talk about setup that much. But we have a payment journal set up, and here we can change the required posting status to paid. So, we can only post the line that I actually paid. So, if there were like three lines with paid, some with valid, some with processing.
14:42
And I was to click post, it only posts the paid line.
14:46
And that’s a good idea always to do this, because then we know that has actually been paid in the bank before we post it. And we don’t need to repost anything and do everything all over. If it’s somehow should be rejected in the bank.
15:00
In a, in a later process.
15:04
Also, we can find payment discount automatically. So, if you have some vendors, we’d like 30 days of payment, but if you pay within eight days you get a 2% discount. If you switch this on, we can automatically find that payment discount.
15:20
Also, we have some handle bank holidays. We have built in all UK bank holidays.
15:25
So, this means that if I was sent the payment that was due on a bank holiday, we can move it before or after. So, if I do before, it will automatically make sure that this payment is done before a Bank holiday. This also ensures that if you’re using the payment discount, it will be paid within the payment discount period and, and not after.
15:54
What happens now is that I will export and send the payments.
15:59
So, I can do all lines. This means that it will try and create a batch for all the lines. Some banks, in the VS to two requirements, which is the open banking solution, has a limitation of amount and lines.
16:13
For example, the HSBC Bank has a maximum of each batch of 50,000 British Pounds or a maximum of 15 lines. And there are certain requirements for different banks. And this, we have built into this process.
16:29
So, if there are more lines that could be in one batch, we would create more batches, or if there was one single payment, for example, that was above that amount, we will create a single payment and a batch for the rest.
16:41
So, clicking all lines, we will now open this window here. So, you can see, there’s a header and there are some lines.
16:50
So, this is like at bulk payments. And this is a single payment.
16:55
And if I doing a bit larger, I’ve set like, a limit on the account for 5000 in this environment. So, this means that it has created like a batch payment for these lines because it is within and lower than the 5000.
17:14
But this single one is above that limit and creates a single payment.
17:20
So, what I need to do now is I need to authenticate the payments by clicking the link.
17:25
So, this will now redirect me to the bank. So, if this was like a Natwest Bank and Barclays Bank, it will direct you to that specific bank. Now, this is like a sandbox environment that I’m in. So, I have like this test bank that I can use.
17:41
So, then we need to authorise the payment and login and confirm the payment.
17:49
This is the account, it will be displayed and then I will confirm this.
17:55
Just need to click OK on this one and confirmed payment. So.
18:03
Click yes.
18:07
The payment is processed.
18:09
So now it removes it, has been sent to the bank. So now I can authorise the single payment.
18:15
So, in this case, authorise the sync of payment.
18:18
Opened again, the bank needs to put in my credentials to authorise it.
18:23
And now this payment is also sent to the bank.
18:30
So, closing this window, you can now see that the status code has been sent.
18:36
In a couple of minutes, I was able, I’m able to go in and I can click update status and then it should be processing. Meaning that we know that the bank has received them and it’s in process. Later on, I’m able to update the status again and then it should be updated to paid. It will also be updated when I try to send a new payment for example. Also, look, are there any new status codes. Then we will receive them also when you try to send new ones.
19:07
Just go here. Now, we can see that this one was valid.
19:10
Now it’s sent. We also see, who has created this one and what time.
19:18
So, this is how to do the payments.
19:22
I would just switch to another environment to show you how we can do, like, the reconciliation part of it.
19:34
Need to remember my password.
19:42
In this environment, I would just click the bank account reconciliation.
19:46
I have like a reconciliation here, might go in, and this is also like a standard bank reconciliation from Business Central. Here, we also added a lot of different functionality. For example, we have added the status column, number of reconciliation suggestion, additional information.
20:05
So, when I am now going in and import and match, automatically we get this statement from the bank using the direct banking.
20:20
Starts reconciling, looking for like vendor ledger entries, customer ledger entries, all the different things that we can match.
20:28
So, now we can see, on the right side, on the left side here, we have the statement lines that we have received from the bank. And on the right side, we have all the open bank entry, which is in Business Central that are still open.
20:42
So, if we look at the status column, we can see there are a lot of different statuses. There is, OK, meaning that it has found a direct match. There’s the unsolved lines, which means these are the ones that we need to look into – it hasn’t find a direct match. It could be that have found something then, it was created like a number of reconciliations.
21:04
There’s also some of the lines that are waiting to cast receipt journal and also some of the lines that are waiting the general journal. That could also be different ones like, awaiting the payment journal and those things.
21:16
Up here on the right side, we have an overview of now, how many lines are into different journals?
21:21
The cash receipts journal, the general journal, or if there were any unposted lines in the payment journal. There would say, OK, maybe there were three lines.
21:29
Then it’s always a good idea to go in and post those lines, because it could be that they have already been paid and they are not in the, in the list of the open bank ledger entries.
21:42
So, so have a look at the lines here. Look at the first unsolved line.
21:48
So, this line here, will have a match of this line over here. Now. I know it because I just look at the amounts and I don’t have that many lines.
21:57
So, the point here is that all payments done from the payment journal should have a 1 to 1 match.
22:03
But I just manipulate a little bit with the system, because we, if we look at like, date and amount, this has the 23rd of August and this has the 24th of August.
22:15
So, what we can do now, we can mark the line and then we can go and we can manual match it.
22:20
But we could also just do, like, a simple setting in Payment Management, where we said, we look one day ahead and one day back and that would automatically have resolved this line and matched it. But now I’ve just matched manual.
22:37
This unsolved line, you have a number of reconciliation suggestion.
22:40
We’ll look at that, has automatically found the customer number, but, because the amount here is different from the statement amount. It is a difference of 126.8 British Pounds.
22:56
In this case, it is because there are some possible payment discount and the customer has paid it with the deducted that amount of the payment discount.
23:06
So, of course, they have paid within time.
23:09
So, they should have the payment discount, but the total amount is larger.
23:14
So, where now I click OK, Payment Management will transfer it to the cash receipt journal and take care of this process.
23:22
Post the discount amount on the discount account.
23:28
And also, it will like completely eliminate the customer ledger entry that we have posted on.
23:38
So now it’s awaiting the cash receipts journal. So, going to the next unsolved line, we can always look in this field here. Say, is there any additional information on some of the lines?
23:50
And based on this and based on a lot of different technology we have built in and intelligence, we match it as much as possible directly. But in this case, there’s no additional information. That could be that one of the employees standing in the airport say, I need some money here now, please transfer them to me or I can’t get home.
24:10
You go directly into the bank, transfer it, and then it will, of course, be aligned in the statement. And it’s not posted in Business Central. And so, what we can do is, we can manually handle it and we can then go in and we can match automatically.
24:25
Again, now it’s transferred to GL journal. And then we have to apply a GL account in order for this to be posted and matched.
24:33
So, the last line here, also have a suggestion on it.
24:37
So, looking at this, found the customer number. The amount has a difference of 38 cents, so they paid 38 cents too less. So, clicking OK to this one. It will create a line in the cash receipts journal, but it can also see there’s a difference in the amounts on the different lines.
24:56
So, we have some journals here and we have the rules that we can set up.
25:02
I don’t want to go that much in it, but all companies have like a fee and interest, so we can set up the different search sectors. We know we get this search sectors from the bank and then we can set up bank fee bank interest. We can search within, extract from left to right and then we can put it on bank account GL – account for positive and negative amount. So, what this has done, when I import the statement, it created these lines for bank fee and bank interest completely automatically and put them into the GL journal with an applied GL account.
25:36
So, going into the journals here, first, look at the cash receipt journal. Says the difference on the lines we already knew that there was the cents and there was this payment discount.
25:52
So, what options do we have to handle this, this difference in demand?
25:57
In the standard cash receipts journal, we can set up some function – as if there’s a difference in the amount within zero to like 0.5 cents. We can put it into like, a difference account and then we can eliminate the customer ledger entry completely as well.
26:18
All we can just post it now and then there will be a difference on the customer lists entry for this amount.
26:24
So, posting the lines now, before I do it actually, there were one of the lines that has a payment from headquarters. So, and into the additional information we got from the bank, they were two invoice numbers and based on that it has created one bank ledger entry and two customers for two different customer numbers; and applied them that specific ledger entry.
26:47
So, we can have a lot. We have seen customers that have, like, 100 different invoices in the same payments, which automatically but just to be found based on the information that are in the additional information using this.
27:04
Clicking post, Yes.
27:09
And we go back to the reconciliation part. Now, the lines that we just posted. OK, so we can go into the general journal.
27:19
Here are the two lines for the fees and this one was the one we manual transferred to the journal. So, I just need to apply it and account, put it on the same here and then I just need to post these lines.
27:32
So, going back, all lines are now OK. So, let’s imagine that also you have received one payment line from a customer, but they send you a specification that, OK, couldn’t be in the notification in the bank.
27:47
So, I have specification on an e-mail with 100 invoice numbers to have just paid, then copied the 100 invoices from the e-mail, go into the additional information and just paste them in.
27:59
Then, we have the information in the notification text.
28:01
And then, we can just go up an automatic share and then, it will find all the new information that we have applied and try to match it, based on that.
28:11
We can also, if it has found a customer, or if we just apply a customer to the line, we can also go up and look at applied customer ledger entries. Then it would look on the different customer ledger entries. Now, I was on the line that was not a customer. So, try that one here. Maybe we’re lucky, because they have been applied. So, maybe there’s nothing there, but in this case, there were also two others.
28:39
So, then we can go in, we can look at the difference. And if there was more, we should apply. We just click to tick the boxes and click close.
28:49
And then it will be added and matched.
28:53
We can do the same… Thomas? Yes. We’ve had another question, I would love to know your answer actually. Someone said that they think that this could save them a lot of time in their business.
29:05
Have you got sort of a feeling, or numbers on how much time people would actually save if they’re using this system versus doing everything manually as they’re doing at the moment?
29:17
No, no, no, I don’t have any, like, specific.
29:21
I know that there were a company that said they use normally like three days of doing reconciliation and now they use two hours.
29:33
Based on the functionality, we have what we call, like when everything is set up and you used it for like a month or something.
29:42
We say that we have like a 95% matching. And then you have like the rest of the unsolved, which you manually we have to have to look at.
29:50
Well, that’s a great time saver already. So, thank you. Thank you. You’re welcome.
29:55
So, yeah, of course, it can do a lot of other things, apply vendor ledger employees and we can also do employees in the payment journal together with, with the vendor.
30:07
So, we can also like do the reconciliation afterwards on the employees and for the employees, we also added some different functionality to apply balance account, payment method and other stuff that is not in the standard Business Central.
30:23
So, I think this is the reconciliation. So, if we just post the lines.
30:35
Click Yes, and if I go to the bank account, but just click the button correctly here.
30:43
My system just froze. That’s nice. So, a bank account and I’ll go into the bank account. We can now also click on bank account and statements.
30:53
We can see all the posted statements, I can click on this and I can see different lines that has just been added. We can see the additional information. So, everything will be stored on the statement.
31:06
Also, if there was some bank reference transaction, the Sender ID, a lot of other information, all of this will be stored on the bank card and we’re also is updating.
31:17
If it gets here, what we call the balance, last statement and the last statement number. So, we know exactly also what is the next amount that would come in and match it based on the starting amount and ending amount, so nothing will be lost.
31:32
The last thing I want to show here on this card is, we can allow multiple bank statements.
31:37
This means that if I switch this on, I can have more statements and the same reconciliation.
31:43
And I can also, based on current week, current months and if I choose this, I can also decide whether to create a new reconciliation based on each of the statements.
31:53
So, there’s a lot of different options to do different things.
31:59
So, I think that time is there. The last thing I want to mention, and I don’t know if we also have some integration with Direct Debit. We can show this another day, but there’s also some Direct Debit solution within the payment management.
32:17
Great. So, in fact, just two more questions then we can finish up. So, for when you’re processing the payments, does Continia allow an approval workflow before the payments are sent to the bank? Does that make sense?
32:31
Not yet, but as of 1st October and very soon. We have an approval, approval workflow module, which can do so, you can do several approvals by either amount or this person has to approve before this one. So, we can approve for payments as well, yes.
32:51
OK, and the last question was, thank you for doing the demo. Obviously, we realise that this is not as in-depth as perhaps it could be, so what are the next steps, in case anyone is interested in what can we do for them?
33:04
What we can do next is, we can, yeah, of course, we get the information, what, whether there needs.
33:13
So, yeah, how many banks, what bank do they have? Because there are some settings that you need to do in the bank, and of course, we will deliver that.
33:22
What is the setting you need to do in the bank previous to this? And also, we have some price lists that we can share, or you can share with them. And then, just to, to wait until it is actually released, because the release date for now will also be around 1st October for this product.
33:49
OK, well, thank you so much for giving us the overview demo today. Again, I’m sure we could have gone into it for much, much longer, but we’d like to keep them sort of to that half hour. So, thank you everybody for attending today. The link to the webinar will be sent out shortly, and, as always, it will be available on the website to view or on our YouTube channel. So, thanks once again to Thomas. And thank you everyone for joining us today.
34:15
Thank you so much.
