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Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) Initiative – FIS Documentation

The University has introduced an initiative to enable select vendors to transition from receiving payments in the form of a cheque to an electronic funds transfer (EFT).

Benefits of the EFT Initiative:

  • Increases payment transparency
  • Reduces uncertainties associated with timing of payments
  • Avoids lost or misdirected cheques
  • Eliminates the inconvenience of suppliers having to deposit cheques
  • Increases speed of payment

Click here to get an overview of the EFT Project.

 

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Highlights for Financial Administrators
  • All EFT’s will occur once a week on Tuesdays
  • Most EFT payments will have 25 day payment terms instead of 35 days for most non-EFT vendor payments.
  • For invoices over $50,000, a prompt will remind users to proactively attach supporting documentation (i.e. invoices). In these instances, the back-up documentation is required before the EFT is approved.
  • If an EFT vendor has duplicate vendor accounts, the duplicates will be blocked so that all payments are directed to the EFT vendor number going forward.
    • In cases where an EFT vendor had multiple vendor accounts, and a Purchase Order was created with one of the non-EFT vendor numbers prior to the launch, when processing the PO Invoice Receipt processors must enter the designated EFT vendor number in the “Inv. Party” field (see Option 2 in this article).

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In August 2022, the first phase of the pilot project launched and vetted 33 Canadian currency vendors to transition from payments by paper cheque to direct deposit, offering increased payment speed while reducing processing costs for U of T and vendors. Vendors were selected for the EFT pilot based on their transaction volume and spend, and were onboarded through the Enterprise Service Centre.

Click here to learn how you can get a list of EFT vendors.

After a successful pilot, the second phase of the project will focus on increasing automation and reducing manual workflows.

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Phase 2 will include:

  • Scaling automation to onboard larger number of existing U of T vendors. This includes vendors selected by U of T as well as additional vendors proposed by the U of T community (beginning March 2023).
  • Enabling the convenient display of EFT suppliers in SAP (beginning March 2023).
  • Onboarding new to U of T vendors to EFT (beginning Summer 2023).

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Phase 3 is focused on streamlining processes, particularly in Accounts Payable, for reviewing and approving supporting documentation for payments. The payment run deadline is every Monday at 8 A.M., with EFT payments occurring once a week on Tuesdays.  

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Contacts
Questions about processing EFT payments, reporting and troubleshooting errors in FIS: Contact your FAST Team representative
Questions about vendor master records (i.e. banking information): Contact Procurement Services
Questions regarding EFT transmissions: Contact Accounts Payable