How do I generate a payment file?

Overview

Once you are satisfied with your payroll run and have sent the payslips to your employees, it is time to transfer the payments! If you want information on how to create a payroll, click on this link. If you want more information on how to publish the payslips, click on this link. 

Contents

1. Permissions
2. Initial set-up
3. Do I need to contact the bank before generating this file?
4. Locking payslips
5. Generating the file
6. Other options

Permissions

You need to ensure that you have the 'Manage payroll' permission. 

Initial set-up

Before being able to generate a payment file, it is important that have added a company bank account to Talexio and that your employees' financial details have been filled in.

These can be set up from the employees' details page. It is important that the payment type and financial details parts are filled in.  

Please note that if you do not want to make use of the payment file and will be paying your employees by manual bank transfer, cash, or cheque, then you will need to select 'Manual' as the payment type, and you will not be required to fill in the financial details. For more information on the employees' details section, click here.

Do I need to contact the bank before generating the file?

If you are generating a payment file for the first time, you must first get in touch with your company's bank correspondent to get an encryption code and/or unique client ID (this depends on the bank). Following this, the flow is quite simple. 

Locking the payslips

Now that the initial set-up is complete, it is time to generate the payment file. First of all, you need to ensure that the payslips are locked. For more information on how to lock payslips, click here.

Generating the bank file

You are now ready to generate the payment file!

All you need to do is click on Generate -> payment file:

A window will pop up. Make sure that the details are correct (including the pay date - which is the date when the bank will release the funds). Once you are satisfied, click generate. This will download an encrypted file to be uploaded to the bank's portal. 

Other options

In this window, you may notice other options, such as 'generate a test file', 'specify which employees to pay' and 'advance payment file':

• Generating a test file. A test file may be required by the bank when generating a payment file for the first time. Click here for instructions on how to download this file. 
• Specify which employees to pay. You may wish to stagger payments to your employees. In such a case, you can select this option and select which employees to pay. You can filter by department, position, job schedule, or even employee bank. Or else, you can manually select the employees from the list. The status column will let you know if a payment file has already been generated for the employee(s).
  
  
  
  If you choose to go with this method, the next time you try to generate the payment file, you may choose 'Select employees that haven't yet been paid' to pay off the rest.
  
  
• Advance payment file. If your employees are paid advance payments, you may wish to generate this file first. To do so, simply select the option and generate. Then, after finalising payroll at the end of the period, the advance payments will be omitted from the file. 

Congratulations, you have generated a payment file. Next, you might be interested in generating an FS5. Click here for more information.