How to Create a Payment File

Purpose

The purpose of this guide is to demonstrate how to create a payment file from a pay run in Parolla.

Background

This guide assumes you have read and completed the section on how to set up bank details for the company and employees here.

Parolla can generate a SEPA Credit Transfer file, a Revolut Bulk Payment CSV, or a Bankline CSV payment file from your processed pay run.

SEPA is a Single Euro Payment Area file format agreed upon between European banks for the transfer of Euros.

Bankline is a CSV file used by certain banks (Ulster Bank) as a format for instructing payments.

A Revolut file is CSV that you can upload to Revolut Business accounts.

The benefits of creating payment files are:

• It’s much faster than creating individual transaction instructions with your bank for each employee.
• It reduces the chances of making a mistake when making a payment.

It should be noted that while Parolla can create a file, we cannot actually make a transfer.

The user needs to download the payment file from Parolla, and then upload that file to their bank via the bank’s online portal.

You will need to contact your bank to enable online banking. If you are planning on using SEPA you will need to ask for an Originator Identification Number. The OIN is a unique number that the bank assigns to an individual so that the instruction is deemed to have been made by that person.

When we create a payment file we set the Execution Date as the Payment Date of the pay run.

According to Revenue, the Payment Date is the day that the money becomes available in the employee account. The Execution Date is also the day that the payment should be executed. So you are able to create a payment file a few days in advance, upload it to your bank, and on the nominated payment date, it will be executed.

Creating a Payment File

Go to your processed pay run, and using the action menu choose Create Payment File

Alternatively, you can select payslips individually from in the pay run.

This will take you to the create payment page where you can make any last-minute changes to the payment file.

The page pulls the company bank information from the company setup. And the individual employee payment information for each payslip in the pay run.

You can modify the amount to pay each individual. For instance, if someone had received payment in advance. Or you can delete the payment from the file completely.

At this point, you can choose to either create a SEPA credit transfer file or a Bankline CSV file.

Bankline CSV

Bankline CSV files can be downloaded directly from the Create Payments Page without any further action required.

You then upload the CSV file to your bank to instruct payment.

Revolut CSV

Revolut CSV files can be downloaded directly from the Create Payments Page without any further action required in Parolla.

Note that the Revolut file requires that you have both BIC and IBAN details in the employee payment preferences.

You then upload the CSV file to Revolut, see here for our guide on Revolut Bulk Payment Transfers.

SEPA Credit Transfer

If you choose to create a SEPA then click on the Download SEPA button. This will redirect you to a download page as below:

This page contains a summary of the contents of the file. It also contains an encrypted Hash ‘Fingerprint’ of the file. The code in the green box is an encoded version of the actual SEPA file we create.

It is possible for someone to edit a SEPA file manually once it has been downloaded from our site.

Some banks protect against this by comparing the file uploaded to them against a hash fingerprint that you copy into their portal.

Some banks ask for the full value, while others ask for a truncated 6-character or 8-character value. A truncated value is just the first 6 or 8 characters of the full hash fingerprint.

If the file was changed after being created by Parolla, then it would no longer match the hash fingerprint and your bank would reject the file.

You can copy the fingerprint, or email it to someone with a message. However, we do not email out SEPA files from our servers due to financial information security. You must download that and email/forward it yourself.

Common Problems

Why doesn’t my pay run have a create payment file option?

In order for the create payment link to appear you will need to have entered the bank account details where the money will be taken from.

This can be entered either in the Organisation Setup Wizard or under Settings > Bank details on the left-hand menu.

What is my Originator Identification Number

And OIN is required for all SEPA transfer files, but not for Bankline files.

Your OIN is a unique number identifying you with your bank. The number is issued by your bank.