Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT) is an electronic method of sending money. It can be used to pay suppliers or to send money to staff for payroll or expense reimbursement.
To use EFT’s with Minotaur you’ll need to arrange to have that service either with your bank or with an outside EFT service like EFT Canada. Note that EFT’s can only be sent within the same country. So, if you are located in Canada, you can send an EFT to other Canadian bank accounts. If you need to send money to another country, you’ll need to use Wire Transfers, which are different and usually initiated on your bank account portal.
EFT’s require you set up the Transit Number, Bank ID, Bank Account Number and the Account Holder Name in Minotaur. Minotaur would work with you and your bank to format an electronic file to their specifications. When doing payables or as part of payroll, you can indicate you want to pay that supplier by EFT. After you complete the payables or process the payroll in your Minotaur system, you can generate a single upload file that contains a line item for each outgoing EFT payment. That file would then be loaded to your EFT service and the payments would be initiated. Depending on your bank and the time you upload the file, the amounts will leave your bank account the day you load it and can arrive in the destination bank account the next day or a few days later. Many banks have two step authorization systems where one person can load a file and a more senior person can approve it before the money leaves your account.
Minotaur can design remittance advice notices to bulk email to your suppliers or employees telling them what amount is going to be landing in their bank account, when it will arrive and what it is for (e.g. what invoices for payables).
If you are looking to reduce the hassle of printing cheques, the time delay and uncertainty of mailing cheques and want to speed up the delivery of goods and services to your business, EFT’s are a great option to consider. It’s also great when the people who need to sign the cheques can’t be physically in the office to do the signing. Talk to your Minotaur Project Manager about adding EFT’s and payment remittances to your Minotaur system.