Step 1: Set Reference, Group, Date and Contra

Setting a Group

In PayGate all payments are made within a group.  Before you can create your payment you must choose a group using the group selector.  The selector contains all of the groups that you are currently a member of.

Setting a Contra Narrative

You can optionally set a contra narrative using the textbox marked contra.  This field can be up to 18 characters long.

If the contra record is left blank then PayGate Desktop will use the ‘Originating Account Name’ field of the group’s bank account.  You can view this field by hovering over the bank icon next to the Group selector.  Hovering over the icon will display the group details inspector that includes useful group information including the Originating Account Name.

Setting the Payment Date

By default, PayGate Desktop will automatically choose the next available BACS processing date.  PayGate takes into account weekends and other BACS non-processing dates such as UK public holidays.

If you want to set a future processing date you can manually change the date using the payment date picker.  To manually change the processing date either click on and edit the date directly using the date text box or click the calendar icon to bring up the date selector.

PayGate Desktop will prevent users from picking an incorrect date.  Incorrect dates are those in the past, weekends or other non-processing days and also dates too far out in the future.

Step 3 - Import the Payment Data

In the ‘Payment File’ area for the page, click the button marked ‘Select’.  This will open a standard file browser.

Browse to the file that contains your payment data.  Highlight the file and click the button marked ‘Open’.  PayGate Desktop will open the file and start reading the payment data contained in it.

Once imported, PayGate will display the payment data in the payments grid in an easy to read, tabular format.

Ten payments lines are shown at a time to aid readability.  If your payment file contains more than ten lines then you can view other parts of the file by clicking the pager in the bottom left of the payments grid.

Individual columns within the grid can be sorted.  For example, to sort the payment data by amount, click the ‘Amount’ link in the column header.

Step 3 - Validate the Payments

The payment data is now imported into PayGate but before we can create a submission file, and send it to BACS, we must validate the payments.  Payment validation searches through the imported payment data and runs a series of tests and rules against the data to ensure the payment will be able to be processed without errors or rejections.

Among the tests run are:

• Sortcode and account number checking, also known as modulus checking.
• Checks on the originating and beneficiary banks to check that they are able to process the payment.
• Checks on the individual and aggregate payment totals to check if they exceed the maximum allowable amounts.
• And around 50 further checks to ensure the payments will not be rejected.

Validation is mandatory and cannot be skipped or circumvented.

Validation Results

During validation an individual payment can produce one of three results.

Result	Description
Pass	No problems found with the payment instruction
Warning	Validation has issued a warning.  Users should inspect the warning to determine if there is a problem with the payment
Fix	An error has been found and the submission cannot proceed until the error has been corrected.

if validation passes then you will see a green result bar and you can proceed straight to step 4.

Payments that contains Warnings

If validation results in warnings you should read each validation result to determine if the submission should proceed.  If necessary remove or edit  any incorrect payments and re-run validation.

If you wish to continue with the submission despite the warnings then you must tell PayGate that you accept the warnings.  Tick the Accept Warning box and proceed to Step 4.

Payments that contain Errors (Fixes)

An instruction marked as ‘Fix’ will definitely fail further along the submission.  If the validation results contain fixes (Errors) then you must either remove or correct the invalid payments before proceeding.

Step 4 - Create the Submission

Click the button marked 'Create Submission.  PayGate will format the payments into a BACS ready file and issue action requests to the members of the group that can sign the payment file. 

The Creation stage of the submission work has now been completed.