All posts by Kristin Macaulay, Marketing Coordinator

Telpay Payment News
Bringing You Payment Insights, Trends and Best Practices

How to Prevent Payment Delays During a Disruption in Postal Service

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With a possible postal service disruption looming in the near future, your clients will be happy to know that their electronic payments will not be affected by the potential disruption.  There may still be a few of your clients that are not making all of their payments electronically.  If this is the case, now is the perfect time to prepare your clients for switching their remaining cheques payments to electronic payments. To help them get started, here are a few ways to prevent payment delays should a postal disruption take place:

Start collecting banking information from your Canadian suppliers

Collecting banking information from your suppliers is often assumed to be a daunting task; however, it is quite the opposite.  Collecting banking information is as easy as sending an email to your suppliers using Telpay’s Biller Information Form.  This form outlines exactly the information needed in order to process an electronic payment to your suppliers.

Let suppliers know that they will be receiving an electronic payment

Start planning ahead and letting your suppliers know now why you would like to switch from mailing a cheque to sending an electronic payment.  You can let your suppliers know that you are processing electronic payments by sending them our Notify Your Suppliers form. The form is customizable (feel free to add your company logo!) and can assist in explaining to your suppliers what direct deposits with Telpay is all about. For example, let your know suppliers know that they will receive an email or fax remittance from Telpay once they have received an electronic payment to make reconciling payments easy.

Make sure all your current electronic payment details are up to date

While you are adding new suppliers to your electronic payments list, make sure that your list of suppliers that you have previously sent electronic payments to, is up to date.  Be sure to confirm and update their mailing address (including postal code), ten digit phone number and their banking information.  If there are any updates to supplier information that needs to be made, be sure to update this information in your accounting software as well as in the Telpay software.

When you are ready to start paying your suppliers electronically and adding their banking information to the Telpay system, you can walk through the process using our step-by-step instruction manual, attend a live training webinar or give us a call at 800-6650-0302

Telpay Payment News
Bringing You Payment Insights, Trends and Best Practices

Don’t Be Tied to Your Desk This Summer

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Summer is in full swing and as Canadians; we know all too well how important it is to soak up the summer months while we can.  Here at Telpay, we want to help you spend as much of the summer months ahead out of the office and in the sun making memories doing what matters most to you!

For the entire duration of the summer, Telpay will be hosting remote authorization training webinars to help our customers learn how they can approve payroll and payments while they are away from the office.  There is no need to be tied to your desk this summer!  Join us for a remote authorization webinar and not only will you be learning how you can spend your summer months untied from your desk, you will also be entered to win a $50 Visa gift card.

Register for a remote authorization webinar today!

PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL WEBINARS ARE SCHEDULED IN CENTRAL TIME. Please adjust the webinar start times according to your time zone.

Telpay Payment News
Bringing You Payment Insights, Trends and Best Practices

All Your Bills Paid, In One Place

may16_paybillsTelpay’s bill payment feature has streamlined the payables process for many Canadian businesses.  We process payments for thousands of vendors and suppliers every day.    Telpay’s bill payment feature is designed as an all-in-one solution where you can pay any bill, including utilities.

We have specific features built around our utility payments to help streamline these tedious payment tasks.

Here are a few features that help make utility payments easy when processing through Telpay:

Multiple account numbers for one supplier

If you have multiple account numbers to pay to for one supplier, you can set up multiple account payments.  For example, if you have 10 Rogers Wireless cell phone accounts to pay, you can pay multiple account numbers and allocate the total amount due to each account number. To learn more about how you can start allocating payments to multiple account numbers, follow our step by step instruction guide.

Next day payment deposits

You have the option to fund your utility payments by sending your money to Telpay using your online banking system.  This option requires only 1 business day lead time to process your payments.  Your utility bill payment file and the funds for the file must be sent to Telpay by 3:00 PM, CST, 1 business day prior to your payment date.

No need to collect banking information

Utility payments are one of the most common payments processed by Telpay.  We have a large biller database for all utility payments types for across Canada.  This makes it easy for you to simply import your payments and click ‘pay’.  There is no need to collect banking information for your utility payments as Telpay already has this information stored for you.

Telpay will notify the utility supplier when the payment has been made

Once a payment has been made to your utility supplier, Telpay will notify them via email or fax when the electronic payments will be deposited.  The remittance report also summarizes who is paying them and the account numbers to make for an easy reconciliation process.  You can view an example remittance report here.

Telpay Payment News
Bringing You Payment Insights, Trends and Best Practices

3 Spring Time Streamlining Tips

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Warmer weather is finally in the air. Spring cleaning has set in and people are cleaning out their closets and clearing away the mess left behind after that last pile of snow has melted (ok there maybe a few SMALL piles of snow left in Winnipeg).  Spring cleaning season is also tax season, which provides an opportunity to cleanup your business.  These three spring-cleaning steps for streamlining your payments process can help ensure you are setting yourself up for a successful business year.

Batch payments for easy and clean bank reconciliation

If you are able to batch your payroll and bill payments runs on the same day, your payment batching will make for easy and clean bank reconciliation at month end.  Payment batches are consolidated to one clean reconciliation line.  When you process 15 payroll deposits and 10 invoices, you no longer have 25 lines to reconcile; it is simplified to a single line.   

Offer electronic payment options for your clients

Every business wants to get paid as quickly as possible, and this involves catering to your customer’s needs and offering multiple payment options.  After you have experienced the ease of electronic payments, why not offer it as a payment option for your clients?  Electronic payment options eliminate trips to the mailbox and the bank for collecting and depositing cheques while creating a convenient way for your clients to pay their invoice.  They also offer a more efficient way to track income details and eliminate the headache and hunting down details later.    Your customers will enjoy the increased payment flexibility while you can enjoy a more predictable and easy to track income for tax time.

Approve payments remotely and enjoy the spring weather

The sun is shining and the snow is melting but, there is just one problem:  You are watching all the beautiful weather changes through your office window.  Spring fever might be the perfect reason to give Telpay’s remote authorization a try!  Remote authorization is a secure method for signing officers to approve payments remotely from their phone.   Bookkeepers and accountants are able to complete the entire payroll and payables process even when the signing officer isn’t in the office. So, as the spring weather starts warming up, spend time on your favorite spring activities instead of driving around town collecting signatures.

Taking even one of these steps this spring will help clean up your businesses’ efficiency and create a path for a profitable year.

Telpay Payment News
Bringing You Payment Insights, Trends and Best Practices

How to Survive the Tax Season

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Brace yourselves; tax season is almost in full swing.  We can almost hear the eye rolls from our ASP partners who are all thinking “like I need a reminder about tax season, the pile of paper on my desk would never let me forget about it”.

That being said, we are not here to remind you about tax season, we are here to offer you a few secret weapons to help you survive and your business thrive.

24/7 Telpay Support Page
That’s right, 24/7.  When you are putting in your long days of work and need support at the ungodly hours of the morning, Telpay’s online support page has 24/7 access to hundreds of popular FAQ, demo videos and tutorial manuals.

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