Customer numbers

Ed Leiter

Can payment assistant handle a vendor with more than one customer number? For several vendors we have multiple accounts and each account has it own account number/customer number. Newspaper vendors such as the Baltimore Sun operate this way. As a public library under county government we have multiple branches throughout the county. Each library branch has a separate subscription with its own account number all under one vendor the Baltimore Sun.

Stephen Churchill

Hey @Ed Leiter,

My apologies for my delay in getting back to you here!

To answer your question, Payment Assistant™ would be able to handle this, though we'd need to do one of two things to ensure that the vendor knows what customer number is paying which invoice here:

• Option 1: Have separate vendor records created for each customer number. While I understand this wouldn't be ideal, it's the most straightforward of the two options as far as ensuring the vendor tracks each payment to the correct account/branch.
• Option 2: Put the org name in the Customer Number field, and from there make sure the invoice description always starts with the correct account number since this will be included on the remittance sent along with the payment, and the vendor could use that to match the payment to the correct account.
  

Gina Bokmiller

@Ed Leiter For the past month, our organization has been using Payment Assistant and for multiple accounts with the same vendor, use the word MANY for the customer number and then in the description put the account number when entering each invoice separately. We have one vendor with three different accounts and because they chose the “virtual card” payment option for all three accounts, they were unable-- with their software-- to apply/break up the different amounts to each invoice. In that case, I created a separate vendor record for each account. I did find out later that REPAY is able to add “swipes” to virtual cards at the request of the vendor. In this case, it was three swipes. Hope this makes sense and helps. So far, I am very happy with Payment Assistant and it is still “early days” for us. I've run into a couple of issues that needed to be straightened out, but they were minor.

Ed Leiter

@Gina Bokmiller
Thanks for letting me know your experience with this. Good information.

Ed Leiter

@Stephen Churchill
Thanks. Good ideas to think about.