Payment Assistant Overview

Payment Assistant automates your accounts payable process, helping you save time, reduce costs, and improve security. With robust encryption, real-time tracking, and seamless integration within Financial Edge NXT, Payment Assistant streamlines payments to vendors via virtual card, ACH, or check. Depending on your organization's payment provider, Payment Assistant processes payments through REPAY or BILL.

Key Benefits

  • Enhanced security and fraud protection

  • Faster, automated payment processing

  • Real-time visibility and reporting

  • Significant cost savings over paper checks

Payment Assistant features automated approvals and reconciliation, a consolidated workflow for all payment types, a tiered approval structure, and vendor onboarding managed by our enablement team. After you onboard, to use Payment Assistant, select invoices, approve the payment run, and Payment Assistant handles the rest — from funding to vendor payment and reconciliation.

Tip: Payment Assistant is included with your Financial Edge NXT subscription. Whether per-payment fees apply depends on your payment provider, which appears under Payment Assistant in settings.

Note: Payment Assistant™ is currently in Limited Availability (LA). Are you interested in participating? Apply to join our LA group. During this time, we'll review and implement participant feedback to prepare for general availability.

About REPAY

REPAY, an accounts payable automation provider, processes your Payment Assistant payments at no cost to your organization. After you approve a payment run, REPAY issues payments to vendors on a defined timeline. REPAY also handles vendor enrollment for you and reaches out to vendors to resolve issues when a payment isn’t processed within a set timeframe.

About BILL

Note: Don’t see this yet? The ability to use BILL with Payment Assistant is currently in an Early Adopter Program (EAP) for some of our customers. Look for full support and general availability in a future release.

BILL, an accounts payable automation platform, processes your Payment Assistant payments for a fee per payment transaction. With BILL, you can pay a vendor as soon as the vendor has a mailing address for a check or EFT details for ACH. To avoid delays on a vendor's first ACH payment, you can set up vendors early. Vendors that connect to the BILL Network choose their own payment method and manage their payment details in BILL.

Payment Methods with BILL

Payment Assistant with BILL pays vendors by ACH, check, or virtual card. Vendors can also opt in to Instant Transfer to receive funds within minutes. Vendors pay a fee for Instant Transfer, and your organization pays nothing extra. International and expedited payments aren't available.

Security with BILL

BILL maintains SOC 1 Type II and SOC 2 Type II certifications and complies with PCI DSS for card processing. BILL stores your bank and vendor payment data and encrypts sensitive information, such as bank account numbers. Your bank information isn't shared with vendors. BILL also monitors activity for fraud and performs risk reviews, which can result in BILL placing a payment on hold. BILL publishes its security and privacy protections and privacy notice on its website.

Getting Started with Payment Assistant

To get up and running quickly, start with our Getting Started tutorial for Payment Assistant, which provides a big-picture overview of the process. For more guidance, review these resources:

When you first navigate to Payables, Payment Assistant, you see the Getting Started page. After setup, you go directly to the Payment Assistant page, where you can create payment runs and check the status of previous payments.

Training: For a visual walkthrough, watch our Payment Assistant training videos.

Frequently Asked Questions

Payment Assistant’s goal is to fully automate your invoice payment process. For many organizations, it can replace the entire process right away. In some cases, you may still need to process a few payments separately, such as wire transfers or international payments.

Virtual cards are single-use credit card numbers issued for a specific payment. Vendors receive an email with the card number, expiration date, and security code for the approved amount. They process the payment like any other credit card transaction and receive funds directly.

Before you approve a payment run, you can generate a pre-payment report from the payment run record. You can also use the Cash disbursement journals report in Reports for more comprehensive payment tracking.

You can use Payment Assistant with any invoice that’s ready to be paid, no matter how the invoice was approved. It works alongside your existing approval workflows.

Payment Assistant records when payments are delivered to your vendors. Payment runs and statuses update in real time as new information becomes available.

Yes, you can manually process payments and print checks directly from Treasury.

No, only payments processed through Payment Assistant are visible within Payment Assistant.

No. Payment Assistant doesn't support international ACH transactions. If a vendor's EFT bank account is set up for international ACH, you'll need to pay that vendor separately outside of Payment Assistant. Wire transfers and other international payments are also not processed through Payment Assistant.

No. Payment Assistant doesn't include an import feature. Invoices are selected from your existing Financial Edge NXT records when you create a payment run.

No. Payment Assistant doesn't generate or affect 1099 reporting. Continue to manage 1099s in Accounts Payable as usual.

To offboard from Payment Assistant, contact Blackbaud support. There is no self-service cancellation in the product.

After you approve a payment run, BILL creates the payments and withdraws funds from your bank account by ACH on each payment's process date. Process dates can differ across payments in the same run. The processing timeline explains the cutoff time, delivery times by payment method, and what appears on your bank statement.

No. With BILL, vendors can receive a check, ACH payment, or virtual card without creating a BILL account. Only vendors that accept an invitation create a free BILL account, which lets them manage their own BILL Network payment details and view their payment history.

Vendors receive payment emails from BILL, not from Blackbaud or Payment Assistant. The emails show BILL branding and your organization's legal name. You can't preview or customize them. Learn more about vendor payment communications.

BILL voids a virtual card that the vendor doesn't run within 20 days and reissues the payment by ACH or check. BILL voids a check that the vendor doesn't cash within 90 days and credits the funds back to you. Read about stale payments for the full details.

BILL doesn't charge vendors for check or ACH payments. Vendors that process a virtual card pay their usual merchant processing fees. Vendors that opt in to Instant Transfer pay a fee for faster funds. Your organization doesn't pay for virtual card payments or Instant Transfer.

Payment Assistant powered by BILL is a separate product from the BILL connector. Organizations that use BILL directly keep their existing BILL account and connector, and there is no migration path between the two. To use Payment Assistant, you start with onboarding.