Close the loop: Paying vendors directly in NetSuite with Zone AP Payments

Finance teams handle everything in NetSuite until payments force them outside the ERP, creating portals, manual steps, and broken reconciliation. This session shows how NetSuite native AP Payments brings that missing step back into NetSuite, delivering a single invoice to pay workflow from capture through payment. It highlights how teams can pay domestic and international vendors directly in NetSuite, eliminate external banking tools, automatically reconcile payments with real time status visibility, and scale AP without adding headcount.

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Transcript:

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Andrea Boyle

Today's session is all about bringing vendor payments into NetSuite to eliminate those pesky bank portals, automate your reconciliation process, and create one connected invoice to pay workflow. Quick introduction.

I'm Andrea Boyle, senior product marketing manager at Zone and Co. Just a little bit about myself, twenty years experience in technology and software, over fourteen years in marketing, over eight years in product marketing.

I would like to spend some time introducing my cohost today, Justyna, our Zone and Co capture product manager. Justyna, just take a moment and introduce yourself.

Justyna Bielak

Hi. Thanks, Andrea.

My name is Justyna. I've been Zone and Co over five years, and I'm the product manager for Zone and Co capture.

And, indeed, today, I'm happy to share demo of our new functionality.

Andrea Boyle

Wonderful. Justyna, thank you so much for joining us today.

So just everybody real quick, where before we get into all the details of payments, just a quick few house housekeeping notes. Today's session, the chat has been disabled, but you can submit questions at any time using that q and a feature.

We definitely encourage you to ask questions throughout. We're gonna also be running a poll during the session, so just keep an eye out for those as they launch.

And this session is being recorded, so you will receive the recording in about two to three days. Our our agenda today, we're gonna cover really quick about who Zone and Co is in case you're new to Zone and Co.

Then we're gonna talk about some challenges with AP teams and what they face when it comes to paying their vendors today. Justyna is gonna do a live demonstration of our zone capture solution and looping in that whole in both invoice to pay workflow all in NetSuite.

And then we love that interaction, so we've carved out time at the end for q and a. But just note everybody, if we don't get a chance to answer all your questions, we will respond to you via email.

If you're not familiar with Zone & Co, we're one of the very few providers building financial solutions directly inside NetSuite. That means no third party integrations, no data sync delays, just one system, one source of truth.

We offer a full suite of NetSuite native products that helps finance teams like yours streamline everything from billing and payroll to AP automation reconciliation, approvals, and reporting. We proudly support over 4,000 customers around the globe, and we have over more than a decade of experience focused solely on NetSuite and finance.

Our solutions extend NetSuite's capability, by bringing advanced functionality and automation to the process finance teams rely on every day. So really quick before we get started, I'd like to ask you a poll.

How are you paying your vendors today? If everybody could just take a quick second and answer this poll. Wonderful.

Okay. Just being mindful of time here.

We're gonna go ahead and close out this poll right now, and we can share. So some of the results, as you see, a majority of cost majority of users are still paying through bank portal.

So you understand the frustration logging into every bank portal and then having to still bring that information back to NetSuite. It can be, you know, a little challenging.

So we're gonna go ahead and go into our next slide here. And, you know, when we look at some of the challenges that organizations face, with AP automation, it can look really great on the surface until it's time to actually pay those vendors.

Invoices get captured, approvals get routed, then everything just lives neatly inside NetSuite, but then the payments force teams to step outside the system. And that's where the friction starts, exporting payment files, logging into bank portals.

Then what do you do when you're tracking FX? You're doing it manually. So then, you know, when it comes time to logging everything back into NetSuite, it's just in reconciling everything in NetSuite, it becomes very complicated.

Everything's is very disconnected. And then you have very limited visibility into payment statuses.

You know, then unexpected wire fees, delays in settlements, you know, all of this increases the amount of work audits, you know, audit risk, you know, and it it just delays your month end close. And the important thing to note here is it isn't a failure on the AP teams.

It's a gap in the process itself. Payments are the last mile of AP.

And when they happen outside of NetSuite, the entire workflow breaks down. So this is exactly the gap that Zone & Co AP payments was built to solve.

With Zone & Co AP payments, we're bringing vendor payments directly inside NetSuite so the entire invoice to pay workflow lives in one place from start to finish. This isn't a bolt on or a separate portal.

Zone AP payments is a native extension of the zone AP workflow powered by Zone & Co TransferMeT. Zone & Co TransferMeT regulated global payments network.

What does that mean in practice is that APTs can pay domestic and international vendors without leaving NetSuite, without exporting files, without juggling external tools. Payments becomes part of the same controlled audible process as invoices and approvals with built in visibility reconciliation and compliance.

And now that we've talked about the problem and how we close that last mile, it's time to show you what it actually looks like. So now we're gonna go ahead, and Justyna is gonna walk you through a live demo.

Take it away, Justyna.

Justyna Bielak

Perfect. Thank you, Andrea.

Let me share the screen. Alright.

I hope you can see my NetSuite account because as Andrea mentioned, Indeed Zone & Co capture now supports AP payments, so allowing you to manage the entire accounts payable workflow from invoice capture through approvals up to the payment without leaving NetSuite. So I'm happy to walk you through end to end process in today's demo.

Let me just start by showing the beginning of user journey for those who maybe are not that familiar with Zone & Co capture. When your vendor sends you a pdf invoice via email or for us e invoice through the global invoicing network, what, what is very common in Europe as governments introduce mandatory invoicing requirements, Zone & Co capture automatically picks up these documents and pull them into, as we call it, incoming queue.

This is the starting point for your processing. From here you have two choices, you can either fully automate the process in case, results captured results are, good enough for auto processing.

Zone & Co Capture will automatically create vendor bill directly in NetSuite for you. The second option is the manual review by the end user with the split screen.

You have all visibility into the email that came from your vendor or, in general, e invoice, if that's also the case. Zone capture, thanks to AI and OCR tools, capture data for you, match the subsidiary vendor purchase order, and thanks to the handy split screen, all details are prepopulated for you.

Our solution also includes freeway matching, so if you're dealing with purchase orders, item receipts, all of that comparison, is done directly in NetSuite for you. Once the vendor bill is created, Zone & Co Approvals, provides a flexible approval workflow, allowing transaction to be approved either directly in NetSuite or via email.

So once we get to the point that vendor bill is created in NetSuite, approved, now we get to the most interesting part of the demo. So how do we actually pay this vendor bill in NetSuite? This is especially challenging when you're dealing with multiple currencies, multiple subsidiaries, multiple banks.

Based also what you responded on the poll, we see that at this stage exactly you need to leave NetSuite, probably log in to external portal to pay, to pay your vendor bills or to load file, to the bank. And this is exactly where Zone & Co payments comes in and allow you to pay vendor bills directly in NetSuite.

Real time status tracking system ensures that in NetSuite, data always is in sync, and you have full visibility where your funds actually are at the moment. Thanks to the integration with Transformate that also Andrea mentioned, our payment provider, paying bills in NetSuite has never been easier.

Alright. Let me show you how exactly to do we we're gonna do that.

The first step is establishing connection with our payment provider, TransferMate, so that your NetSuite account is securely connected with, TransferMate. Once this is done, you can start creating virtual bank accounts with Transfirmate, also directly in NetSuite.

Within just few clicks, we can generate virtual bank accounts in selected currencies. Let me quickly show you only by prepopulating subsidiary, currency, and corresponding GL accounts so we know which GL account in NetSuite we will be reconciling.

Within a few clicks, instantly, TransferMate will generate virtual bank accounts for you. I already have on my account some virtual bank accounts generated.

Let me show you an example. So all data sits in NetSuite.

As you can see also, the balance of my bank account is visible, and IBAN bank account is automatically generated for you. You can access all the data in NetSuite.

So this is the account, the source account for your payments. So this is the account from which you will be paying your vendor bills.

The moment you top up your account, this is ready to start executing payments in NetSuite. The second step is, your vendor bank account.

So, of course, we need to know where the funds should be transferred. What's your beneficiary bank account, as we call it? That's also something you set up directly in NetSuite.

With an AP payment beneficiary bank account, you need to set your vendor bank payment details. They are also immediately synced with our payment provider, and they gen and they verify that all the bank details are valid.

So you will not risk any fraudulent payment because validity of the bank account number or IBAN is performed on the fly when you create beneficiary bank account. Okay.

So now we have a virtual bank account, our source bank account for payment, and we also have some examples of beneficiary bank account. So now it's time to actually pay some bills together.

We have three options within zone AP payments. We can manually pay single vendor bill.

We treat it as an ad hoc payment for very urgent situation when you really need to quickly pay a single vendor bill. The second option I will be showing you is a batch payment as, of course, we we know that in case of, high volume customers, creating one big payment batch is the preferred solution.

And the third option is, autopay based on selected schedules that I will also, show you in the end of the demo. Let me start with the most, the most straightforward example so you got a feeling how exactly the flow of the payment looks like.

As I mentioned, I have a vendor bill created through Zone & Co capture directly in NetSuite. Approval flow is also finished.

The vendor bill is approved. Now we're ready to pay the vendor bill.

And this is domestic vendor bill. So from my Dutch subsidiary, I will be paying the Dutch vendor.

Vendor bill is in euros, and I will be generating the payment also from my Euro virtual bank account that I have set with Transfermate. So domestic payment, very straightforward example.

So what you can see on the vendor bill is a new option, pay with Zone & Co. If I click pay with Zone & Co, I'm being prompted with the confirmation that we're about to pay this vendor bill, and let me do that.

What is happening on pressing pay, Zone & Co AP payments now is immediately requesting the payment from our payment provider. So let's wait for the for the connection and the request.

So once, once we press pay, the payment request is being sent to TransferMate to be able to immediately pay this vendor bill for you. As you see, without leaving NetSuite, we're able to pay single vendor bill utilizing connectivity with TransferMate.

On my testing account, we're leveraging native NetSuite payment in transit feature. That is very handy in our scenario because you can really real time track payment statuses.

So as you can see, vendor bill is now set to the payment in transit status. Immediately, you have information that, okay, payment is initiated for this bill already.

And now we're waiting for the confirmation from our payment provider when funds are actually, successfully transmitted to the beneficiary bank account. Let me open also AP payment automation tab on this vendor bill, especially for those familiar with, with NetSuite.

What happened at the moment, Zone&Co AP payments generated automatically, native NetSuite bill payment record. So if we can also open related records payments, you will see that bill payment is automatically generated in the status in transit.

So at the moment, what is happening whenever TransferMate executes a payment successfully, real time, we receive this update status into NetSuite, and this payment will be reconciled on the fly. So if the payment has been successful, the status is moved to confirmed, and the vendor bill will be paid in full.

In case something went wrong, also payment provider will notify us about that. Payment will be rejected, and the vendor bill will be reopened with rejected reason, recorded so you can verify what exactly went wrong, how to correct it, and you can execute the payment one more time with corrected data.

So that was an example of the pay domestic payment bill. So let's move one step further for cross border payments.

So one more time from my Dutch subsidiary, I will be attempting to pay this vendor bill that you can see now for a change. It's in USD currency.

So from my Dutch subsidiary and, virtual bank account in euros, I will attempt to pay my, international vendor. The same flow as before, so pay with zone button for ad hoc payment.

And you will see here additional information. As we attempt to pay cross border payments, within Zone&Co AP payment, you will see directly rate that is being applied on the transaction, the calculation from USD to euro.

And from there, you can have full visibility what exactly exchange rate will be applied by TransferMate for paying this transaction. This exchange rate is locked for, for around twenty seconds to allow you to make a decision.

So as you can see, no hidden fees here. Estimated no hidden fees here.

Exchange rate is visible directly for you the moment we decide to click pay. The flow is exactly the same as before.

So native NetSuite payment record is generated, and transactions reconcile on the fly together with a recording exchange rate on the native NetSuite payment record. So immediately, you have full visibility in NetSuite, about your payment.

Okay. Let me move to the third op to the second option of paying, so the batch payment.

So as I mentioned, paying vendor bills manually is is fast and perfect perfect for ad hoc payments. But, of course, we understand that paying bills in batch is most likely the solution that, quite a lot of customers are looking for.

So within batch payment, we can process multiple vendor bills at once. Let me show how this screen for generation of payment batches look like.

Within the payment batch, you can now pay multiple bills across multiple vendors within one subsidiary and one currency. Let me select my Dutch subsidiary.

I will attempt to create a batch in USD, and I will be paying from my, Eurobank account. You can apply more filters.

Let me maybe at least put the filter on the due date to limit results. And based on that, we see which vendor bills are applicable for payment.

In my case, I have four vendor bills, but you can pay, of course, up to hundreds vendor bills. Let's process this four.

Upon saving, we create a payment batch. We allocate this four vendor bills that I selected within the payment batch.

And now payment batch is prepared for execution of the payments. So similar as for the single bill, now when I click authorize, you will see the pop up that you've seen before, but now it's applying the exchange rate for all vendor bills assigned to the payment batch.

And so also we have full visibility immediately how much money, will be exactly flowing out of our global bank account, virtual bank account with TransferMate as we are attempting to pay bills in USD. Just to show you also an example with already confirmed payments, so as mentioned, payment batch can contain hundreds of vendor bills, and, of course, not all payments are executed at once.

But that's not a problem within the payment batch. Whenever any of the vendor bill is paid successfully, TransferMate will notify us real time that the payment has been executed.

So you can see in my case, I have two payments within the batch. One of them is already transferred to paid in full because it has been confirmed by a payment provider as executed successfully.

One is still waiting for, for execution. So the batch will be closed once we receive confirmation for all payments within the batch.

Okay. Quickly moving to the third option.

As I mentioned, there is also option for autopay based on schedules. How it works? We need to first define our payment schedule.

I have one created on my testing account. I would like to have for the selected vendor, every time when I create vendor bill for this vendor, pay it automatically on due date.

You can select a different option. You can say pay all the vendor bills.

For example, one day before due date or two days before due date to be sure that they are paid on time. I have selected the option I would like to pay it on due date.

The moment I select let me open quickly any testing vendor. So I have payment schedule defined.

I would like to automatically execute payments on due dates. And now the remaining point is to set it on the vendor record in the AP payment automation tab.

So for this particular vendor, I say, I would like to automatically pay vendor bills whenever they are created and whenever due date is, is today, then payment schedule is selected on this vendor. Then it means whenever I create vendor bill, they are marked for auto payment, and the payment batch will be automatically created on due date, and payment will be, requested to transfer made.

Okay. So to close the demo, let me show you one more feature, internal funds transfer.

Zone and Co AP payments allows also to easily transfer funds between virtual bank account you create with TransferMate. So as I mentioned in the very beginning, you can create virtual bank accounts with TransferMate within multiple currencies.

And then if we go to AP payments, five funds management transfer funds, from here, I can freely, transfer funds between multiple virtual bank accounts that I set with TransferMate. So let's say my main currency is euro.

I will be topping up my virtual bank accounts in euro, but then within few clicks, you can perform instant transfer from my Euro account. Let's select some amount.

And let's say I would like to transfer some money to my GBP virtual bank accounts because I have some, vendor bills in GBP that I would like to pay directly from GBP bank accounts. Now we can submit the transfer, and that's also free of charge transfer between virtual bank accounts in TransferMate.

So you can also, without a headache, transfer quickly money between virtual bank accounts. Alright.

Let me stop here with demo as I believe I cover most of these scenarios to highlight the flow inside NetSuite. So paying single vendor bill, domestic vendor bill, single vendor bill, cross border payment, creating a payment batch that includes multiple vendor bills across multiple vendors.

And then we have an option to set scheduled payment, so called auto payment, for selected vendors if we would like to fully automate the payment process. Over to you, Andrea, and let's see if we have some questions on our chat.

Andrea Boyle

Justyna, wonderful. Thank you.

Yes. We do have some questions coming in.

Thank you, everybody. So two questions are very similar.

If a payment fails, how are we, notified? Or if there's a problem with an international payment, who will be providing this information?

Justyna Bielak

Yeah. So payment status, the final confirmation from TransferMate, it's synced directly in NetSuite.

And on our custom record called AP payment, you will see status rejected with the detailed rejection reason that TransferMate will provide to us. And also on the top of the vendor bill, you will see a notification banner that we attempted to pay this vendor bill.

It fails due to certain rejection reason. And from there, yeah, depending on the error message, for example, inactive beneficiary bank account, maybe your vendor just inactive for some reason changed the bank account and didn't notify you, then you will have the rejection reason visible.

So, yeah, within a simple safe search that we provide within the bundle, you can also track rejected, payments with the detailed rejection reason.

Andrea Boyle

Wonderful. And does the solution send payment remittance to the vendor?

Justyna Bielak

At the moment, no. We do not send payment remittance to the vendor, but, yeah, if you're interested in this option, yeah, definitely that's something that we will be exploring better.

Andrea Boyle

And is this new payment solution fully compliant with bank regulations in Europe?

Justyna Bielak

Yes. Definitely.

That's, that's on our TransferMate payment provider. All, certifications are can be provided by TransferMate also on the request if if needed.

Andrea Boyle

And what currencies and countries are supported?

Justyna Bielak

Within global bank accounts, at the moment, we you can set up virtual bank accounts within six currencies, euro, USD, GBP, Canadian dollar, Australian dollar, and what did I miss? And USD, I believe, I didn't mention.

Andrea Boyle

US, Canada, Euro, Great Britain, pound, New Zealand, and Australian dollar.

Justyna Bielak

Oh, perfect. Yes.

Andrea Boyle

Wonderful.

Justyna Bielak

So this these are currencies supported at the moment for virtual bank accounts. If you have request for more currencies, definitely, TransferMate supports them.

So, let us know and, we will make that work, of course. For beneficiary bank accounts, I believe Transformat supports 200 countries and territories.

So at the moment, we, yeah, we, of course, can provide all detailed information about supported regions as the list is very long.

Andrea Boyle

Yeah. And, does the solution only work with virtual banks?

Justyna Bielak

Yes. So virtual bank account is at the moment indeed mandatory, to initiate the payment.

Andrea Boyle

Wonderful. And, what payment approval functionality is available for single bill payment, batch payments, etcetera?

Justyna Bielak

So at the moment, we rely fully on the approval of the vendor bill. So if vendor bill is approved, payment can be executed.

The solution we work on together with our Zone & Co approvals team is also to enable approvals on the payment batch record. So one person can then initiate the payment, and payment batch can be approved.

So more information coming about this sync with Zone & Co.

Andrea Boyle

Wonderful. Wonderful.

I know we have a few questions that we weren't able to get to, so please know we will reach out to you directly.

We appreciate everybody for coming on.

We hope you learned something new.

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