Vendor Payment Manager – NetSuite integration app overview

Celigo’s Vendor Payment Manager augments the accounts payable process in NetSuite by automating the vendor payment file transfers between NetSuite and the Banks, to help accountants and financial controllers manage their time productively. The reason being that we only want to highlight the automation of file transfers and not the complete AP process. These file transfers can be scheduled or run on-demand and support encryption of the outgoing accounts payable files and decryption of incoming bank acknowledgments and payment summary files to comply with specific security requirements of the customer and banks.  ‘Outgoing’ files refer to the accounts payable files generated in NetSuite and sent for consumption by the banks. ‘Incoming’ files refer to the acknowledgment and payment summary files that are sent from Banks to NetSuite.

Data flow

The file transfers are automated and organized. You can run the file transfer by clicking on the Run button against the data flow or by scheduling the data flow run between the range of every 15 minutes to weekly once. The data flows are arranged in the following two sections based on the direction of file transmission:

• NetSuite to Bank (for accounts payable files)
• Bank to NetSuite (for acknowledgment and summary files)

The flows are governed based on the product subscription. If a user needs to transmit files to more than one Bank then Vendor Payment Manager allows the creation of flows for each bank based on the product subscription.

Add Banks to Vendor Payment Manager

You can add as many banks to your integration app by obtaining an appropriate product subscription. Banks are added in two easy steps:

The first is to obtain the right subscription for Vendor Payment Manager such that the required number of banks are supported. The second step is to use the 'Add bank' option in the UI to add those banks in the product after which the flows will be rendered as per the license.

Encryption

The product supports PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) encryption algorithm which is one of the most secure encryption methods and is widely accepted. You can enter and store your “Private Key” and the bank’s “Public Key” along with the passphrase in the “General Settings” section and save them. The bank’s public key shall be used to encrypt the outgoing bank file whilst the user’s private key shall be used to decrypt the incoming bank acknowledgment file.

The integration app supports plain encryption and encryption with signature. You can select from these options in the flow settings as per your preference and requirements.

Note: Encryption is not supported for Saved Search flows.

Decryption

An incoming file from bank to NetSuite can be encrypted by the bank and will need to be decrypted before consumption at the user’s end and Vendor Payment Manager allows easy decryption of the incoming acknowledgement or payment summary files using a simple setting in the Bank to NetSuite flow. This setting invokes the user’s private key stored in the “General Settings” section to decrypt the incoming files. The decrypted file is finally stored in the inbound folder as mentioned in the settings.

File Formats

It supports various file formats like ACH/NACHA, .txt, .xml etc. for scheduled or on-demand transfer to the banks. For incoming bank acknowledgment files only the .txt file format is supported. Any other file format like MTXXX, EDI, Wire or Checks can be supported only if they are in the plain text (.txt) format.

After transfer action

The integration app allows the user to specify how the files will be handled at the source system after they are transferred successfully. The following are the options to choose from:

• Mark file as exported: The file stays in the outbound folder but won’t be picked in the next flow run.
• Archive to Folder: The file is moved from the outbound folder to a user specified folder.
• Delete: The file is deleted from the outbound folder.

Every file that is successfully transferred, is also stored in a custom folder within NetSuite for logging and audit trail purposes. The folder will not be automatically refreshed or emptied and should the user require they may manually do it from NetSuite file cabinet.

Note: This feature is not applicable to the Saved Search flows

Saved Search Flows

The integration app allows transfer of accounts payable files as a default and if required the user can also use NetSuite saved searches to generate their own files that can be sent to the receiving banks. 

It requires minimal steps to setup a saved search flow with the help of intuitive settings in the integration app. As a user you can select a saved search from the drop down which shall be used to generate a file in the CSV file format which would be transferred to the bank. It should be noted that the saved searches need to be ‘Public’ and ‘Active’ for the integration app to be able to access them. Vendor Payment Manager supports saved searches for NetSuite record types, Vendor, and Transactions.