Creating and Managing Remittances

What is a Remittance?

Creating a remittance is something you can turn on for a specific beneficiary that will result in all separate payments to this beneficiary getting grouped together as one big payment - until you decide to release it out of the system. So instead of this beneficiary receiving a few individual payments, they will receive one bulk amount containing all the individual payments.

Remittance payments can be useful to:

1. batch payments together for the same landlord

2. batch payments together to save bank costs:

A normal EFT out of the system is currently R3.75 excluding VAT.
A remittance payment is R5 per the remittance file, and then R2 per payment in that remittance. E.g., R5 for a payment file going to your business, and then R2 per commission payment, R2 per admin payment, etc. in that file (excluding VAT)
Thus, remittances only become cheaper if you are paying more than three payments to this beneficiary in a month if you do the calculation.
The more payments you group together in a remittance before releasing, the more bank fees you are saving.

3. batch payments together for business reporting purposes

How to setup a Beneficiary for Remittance payments

In order to setup a Beneficiary for Remittance Payments, you must:

select the Beneficiaries option from the Payments menu to open the list of Beneficiaries
use the search feature to search the Beneficiary in question
click View to open the Beneficiary form
tick the Auto Remit check box to enable the feature for the Beneficiary
tick the Remit by category checkbox to have the system create separate remittances for each category where the Beneficiary is linked
click the Update button

What will happen when Auto Remit has been enabled for a Beneficiary

When a Payment Instruction is approved for a Beneficiary, the system will check if there are an open Remittance for that Beneficiary and link the Payment Instruction to the open Remittance. If there are no open Remittance for the Beneficiary, the system will automatically create a new Remittance for the Beneficiary and then link the Payment Instruction to the Remittance.
All Remittances are immediately placed On Hold when they are created meaning that they will not by default be sent to the Banking Interface for payment. To send them to the bank for payment, a user must first Release the remittance.
When a Remittance is paid on the bank, a Remittance payment notification will be sent to the Beneficiary that will include a Remittance Statement showing the individual Payment Instructions that are included in the Remittance Payment IF an email address is filled in on the beneficiary.

How to access the list of Remittances

Select the Payment History option from the Payments menu drop down
From the Payment History Bank Transactions drop down select Remittances as shown below to open the list of Remittances.

Note the following:

use the Search fields and filters to find any specific Remittance or group of Remittances for the same Beneficiary
use the Advanced Filter feature to search on Amount and any combination of Remittance Status (Hold, Released, Paid, Failed)
Status - this field will indicate:
- On Hold - where a Remittance has not been sent to the bank for payment
- Released - where a Remittance has been sent to the bank for payment
- Paid - where the remittance has been paid and all linked Payment Instructions have been marked as paid as well
- Failed - where the payment to the Remittance Beneficiary has failed for some reason
Use the dot menu drop down (see example below) to:
- View Payments - view a list of all the Payment Instructions included in the Remittance
- View Statement - view the Remittance Statement (Pdf report) that will be sent together with the Remittance Payment notification
- Send Statement - open an Email form with the Remittance Statement attached from where the Remittance Statement can be sent manually to the Remittance Beneficiary

Export Remittances - use this feature to export the filtered list of Remittances to an Excel file.

Remittances with Batch Numbers

Some municipalities will process remittance payments against a valid batch number provided by them. In order to cater for this, you can enter a municipal batch number when the Beneficiary type is "Municipal". This needs to be setup by the RAMS support team.