Electronic Payments and File Creation for Accounts Payable in Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Cutting a check to a Vendor is the most basic form of payment, especially in the United States. Unfortunately, checks present an ever-increasing risk for fraud. Fortunately, starting with NAV 2016, we finally have the functionality to create a positive pay file without modifying the system. Check out this How Do I video for setting up Positive Pay in your system. Timing is everything, though. Checks are quickly becoming less common in the United States and is already an outdated form of payment in many other countries. Most businesses try to reduce the need for cash payments as well, unless absolutely necessary. That leaves us with electronic payments.

In my experience, more US based companies are moving to increase the number of Vendors they are paying by ACH, but do not want to do it at the expense of manually entering the payments in both their ERP and the bank site. Luckily, starting with NAV 2013, this is base functionality. For US companies, the default file format is NACHA. To setup your bank account for ACH file creation, you will need to identify the following items on the Bank Account Card:

• Export Format: Select US
• E-Pay Export File Path: Specify the file destination. NAV will automatically save the file to this location. Your user will also need write access to this folder.
• Last E-Pay Export File Name: Specify the naming convention used for NAV to save the file.
• E-Pay Trans. Program Path: Specify the file destination. NAV will move the file created in the E-Pay Export File Path when the Transmit action has been executed.
• Transit No.: ABA Routing number for the bank account.
• Bank Code: Specify the bank code for the bank account.
• Bank Branch No.: Specify the branch number for the bank account.
• Bank Account No.: Specify the account number for the bank account.

The Vendor card will also need a few additional fields completed. Let’s start with the Bank Account. Just like company bank account, your Vendor Bank account will need the following information.

•  Bank Code: Specify the bank code for the bank account.
• Bank Branch No.: Specify the branch number for the bank account.
• Bank Account No.: Specify the account number for the bank account.
• Transit No.: ABA Routing number for the bank account.
• Use for Electronic Payments: This box must be checked.

If this is the most common form of payment for the vendor, you will also want to update the Payments fast tab on the Vendor card.

This brings us to the next level of electronic payments, Wire Transfers and Bank Transfers. Here again, the technology is becoming more common, but most companies still have not had the opportunity to invest in FTP to send data from their ERP system to the bank. Likely, you’ll create your payment journal, go to the bank site and setup your payments and then post them in the NAV.