After many months of testing and customer feedback, we’re happy to announce that Xero NAB Payments is launching this week. It’s available to all Xero customers in Australia who use NAB Internet banking. We think it’s a game changer for accounts payable, which has traditionally been a tedious, time-consuming task.
Here’s how it works: Once you’ve loaded your bills into Xero, it’s time to pay them from your bank account. But there’s no longer any need to manually download ABA files and upload them separately to your bank. Together with NAB, we’ve designed a more automated process that sends your payment instructions from Xero directly to NAB, Australia’s largest business bank.
You just approve the payments in a few steps on the NAB mobile app, whether you’re in the office or on the go. The payment is then recorded automatically in Xero, ready for you to reconcile. You can send payment instructions of up to $40,000, depending on your daily NAB limit.
Simply put, Xero NAB Payments enables small businesses to pay multiple bills quickly, seamlessly and securely. That leaves more time for your business, knowing that your bills have been taken care of and your suppliers have been paid.
A simple, secure and seamless way to pay and manage bills
The benefits accrue not just to business owners. Xero NAB Payments allows accountants and bookkeepers to see both sides of their client’s transaction. This means they’re working with accurate, near real-time data to better understand cash flow and can provide deeper advisory services.
Andrew Haynes, Founder of Kindred Accounting who was part of the pilot group said, “Xero NAB Payments is super exciting! I love having my accounting software connected to my bank – the more systems that talk to each other the better. It’s intuitive, reduces the risk of human error and speeds up the process of paying bills.”
Here are some of the other features.
Better visibility: Get notified of the status of your payments as they update in NAB, and know that your suppliers have been paid on time. You’ll get a digital record of all your payments in Xero, rather than having to manually go back and mark bills as paid.
Greater accuracy: Before a payment instruction is submitted to NAB, customers will be alerted of any potential errors, such as a missing payment field or incomplete account number, reducing the risk of failed payments.
Safe and secure: Payment instructions are securely sent from Xero to NAB. Our industry-leading security ensures payment instructions are transmitted safely, protecting the information you store with Xero. This direct connection is a more secure way to pay than manually handling ABA files, which contain sensitive payment details.
Pricing plans to suit your needs
When you consider that time is money, the value of Xero NAB Payments is clear. That’s why we’ve created three payment tiers to best suit the number of bills you pay each month. And your first month is free.
- $3 for 10 monthly transactions (35c per transaction thereafter)
- $10 for 40 monthly transactions (25c per transaction thereafter)
- $20 for 100 monthly transactions (20c per transaction thereafter)
You can find the full details here.
If you’re ready to get started, it’s simple. You just need:
- Your NAB ID that you use to log into NAB Internet banking
- Your NAB transaction account linked to this ID
- To send payments from Xero to NAB, you’ll need to be a creator on the bank account
- To approve payments on the NAB mobile app, you’ll need to be an approver on the bank account
You can either add the Bill Payments (NAB Accounts) add-on to your plan in Subscription Management. Otherwise you can add it the next time you pay your bills from within Xero.
We think you’ll love Xero NAB Payments, and we look forward to hearing about your experience with our latest feature.
For more information check out our FAQs.
Is the pricing per bill or per supplier? We often pay 10 or more bills for a single supplier at the same time, is this charged as 10 separate transactions?
Hi Megan, the pricing bundles apply to the number of transactions or bills that are paid. In your example, this would be charged as 10 separate transactions. More detail can be found here scroll down to Xero NAB Payments Pricing and expand the box. Hope that helps.
like we dont already pay enough already.. this should be free
Why does this kind of pretty basic electronic linked functionality cost even more?
Isn’t that what we pay the ever increasing subscription prices for?
Thanks for writing in, Marten. NAB and Xero have invested significant time and resources to create a simpler, faster and more secure way to send payment instructions. We think it’s great value when you consider the time savings and security, but we recognise that some customers will opt to continue uploading ABA files. That service remains available at no charge from Xero.
Hi there,
I have been testing this and I believe there are a few issues .
1. History and notes are not updated on the transaction page once an invoice’s remittance advice has been sent out.
2. Multiple invoices from the same supplier are not batched in the NAB but individual amounts are sent out. However Xero sends out a batch remittance advice to the supplier. So the remittance advice never matches the amounts in a supplier bank account.
3. There is no record in Xero of the batched invoices’ remittance advice for the same supplier being sent out. You can go to the suppliers notes and see that a total amount has been sent out but it will not show you for which invoices. There should be no batched remittance advices being sent out by Xero but individual ones as this is how NAB system works.
Hi Peter, thanks so much for sharing your feedback with us. I have passed this on to my team for consideration. Cheers, ^BA
Some days I pay up to 100 people, this system of approving every supplier individually compared to approving once with an upload of the .aba file. And then you need to individually reconcile each payment individually or once with the uploaded file.
Have I understood this correctly? Any ideas on how we get around this?
Is there a way of automating the pay for employees? I.e. translate the latest pay run into an outstanding bill that can be sent?
Hi Matthew, thank you for your comment. The NAB payments feature does not currently support pay roll use case – however, we are looking at straight through payments within Xero so please watch this space.
I have some issues using this feature. If a supplier’s name includes a character, such as |, then the payment rejects.
Also agree with Peter above, if paying many invoices and some have the same amount, then reconciliation is a nightmare.
The BIG issue is that I would like to know how to change the “remitter name” – all payments have rejected because this is set to more than 16 characters and that is the limit according to NAB.
Thank you for your feedback, Sue – I will pass it on to my team to take a close look at.
Hi,
we’ve been facing issues with the bill payment add on where once the bill is sent to NAB for Payment Approval, it never shows up on the Payment Approval list to approve, this only started since last Thursday,
Any update on this?
Hi Laurence – thanks for your comment and sorry to hear that you are experience an issue. Please can you raise a case with our Support Team so we can take a closer look into what may be happening here? Thanks!
We tried it and it is asking to login to NAB. Do we need to that every now and then? My client has logged in already in his NAB when we first made it but when I tried making a payment it requested that I logged in. Do we need access to the bank account?
Hi Abdul,
Thanks for your comment. In order to use Xero NAB Payments on behalf of your clients, please follow these steps:
1. Enter supplier bills into Xero, select the approved bills to pay, choose to pay them using Xero NAB Payments, and complete the bill payment details.
2. Xero sends the payment instructions securely to NAB, ready to be paid.
3. Here we suggest you notify your client that there are bills pending approval and they can log in to their NAB mobile app and approve them for payments. Alternatively, you would need to access your client’s bank account to approve the bills.
4. Once the bills are approved, NAB processes the payments to the suppliers. You can get notified of the status of payments as they update in NAB to know suppliers have been paid.
If you need any further assistance, please raise a case with our support team in Xero Central. One of our team will happily talk you through it.
Thanks
Joanne