Sage 50 Accounting Canada allows direct payments: direct deposit to suppliers and employees plus pre-authorized debit for customers. There are two ways to do that in the program: EFT Direct (Electronic Fund Transfer) and Sage 50 Direct Payments (Beanstream).

When using EFT Direct you will install that add-on program to work with Sage 50. The direct payments will be sent to your bank directly. With Sage 50 Direct Payments (Beanstream) there no need for a new program as it is integrated to Sage 50. You will send the direct payments to Beanstream directly.

You can choose EFT or Beanstream based on your specific situation and the cost involved. Both are low cost compared to the market. If you need an in-house option, EFT will be a good choice, if not then Beanstream is ideal! For both methods, you will have control over the accounting side as the transactions are in Sage 50 Canada database.

EFT Direct is an add-on program to Sage 50 Canada that is compliant with CPA 005 norm (Canadian Payments Association). Once installed and setup, it allows sending direct deposits to vendors or employees and receive transfers from customers. It is easy to use. The deposit or pre-authorized debit can be done in a three steps process:

-          First the transactions (supplier’s payments, employee’s payroll, customer’s receipts) are posted in Sage 50 Accounting Canada as usual,

-          Second, EFT program retrieve the transaction’s information from Sage 50 and generates a file,

-          And third the file generated can be uploaded to the bank website.

To setup EFT Direct company profile you will need to contact your bank or financial institution to ask them if you can send transactions that are compliant with CPA 005 standard. Usually all major Canadian banks can receive a CPA 005 compatible file. The bank should give you an identification number. That number is referred to in EFT as originator number, banks can have different names, for example: ID number, organization or customer number. Once you have that 10 characters long number you can setup your company profile in EFT.

Sage has an annual charge to use EFT, your bank or financial institution might have some fees associated with EFT upload. You can visit our website or call 1-888-261-9610 to buy EFT for Sage 50 Canada.

Sage 50 Direct Payments (Beanstream) is an add-on service to Sage 50 Canada. This service is integrated into Sage 50 Canada and can be activated at any time. After subscription with Beanstream, the user receives a company identification number, user name or logon and password.

In Sage 50 Canada, vendor’s, customer’s and employee’s records need a one-time setup by clicking on Direct Deposit tab for vendors and employees or Pre-Authorized Debit for customers.

As with EFT, direct payments using Beanstream is a three step process:

-          First process the transactions (supplier’s payments, employee’s payroll, customer’s receipts) in Sage 50 Canada,

-          Second upload the direct payment to Beanstream server from Sage 50,

-          And third login on Beanstream website to confirm the payments amounts.

You can compare EFT Direct and Sage 50 Direct Payments here.

We will focus on each these methods and errors messages on other blog posts.

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