What is bulk transacting?

Bulk transacting helps you efficiently collect funds, make bulk payments and make multi BPAY® payments from your client's Cash Management Account (CMA), Accelerator Account and Wrap Cash Account.

What authority is required for bulk transacting?

To obtain authorisation for bulk transacting:

  1. Your dealer group needs to register for this functionality through a Business Development Manager (BDM), and
  2. Your client needs to complete a third party authority form to provide your dealer group with access to debit their account.

The authority levels are:

  • Tax/Government Payment Authority – Enables you to make payments to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). 
  • Financial Services Debit Authority – Enables you to withdraw from your client's cash account to an account held in the name of, or controlled by, your company or firm through which you are licensed to provide financial services. 
  • General Withdrawal Authority – Enables you to make withdrawals for any purpose including withdrawing fees, making tax payments to the ATO or investment payments. Please note General Withdrawal Authority is only available to select firms that meet specific eligibility criteria.
  • Accelerator Account Transfer Authority – enables you to transfer funds from your clients Accelerator to the linked CMA

For more information see Understanding Third Party Authority for FSPs and FCSs.

Authority Level

File Type

Purpose

Payment Details

Tax/Government Payment Authority

Tax payment (Debit file)

Make a tax payment to the ATO  Electronic file transfer (EFT) deposit trust account using unique EFT codes or Payment Reference Numbers.

Electronic file transfer (EFT) using BSB and account name.

Ensure you upload files before 2pm (Sydney time) for successful payments to be received in the destination account overnight. 

ATO BPAY payment (Debit file)

Make a tax payment to the ATO using BPAY and your client's Customer Reference Number.

Make BPAY payments to Biller Code 75556 

Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) payment file (Debit file)

Make BPAY payments to ASIC using the ASIC biller code and unique customer reference numbers.

Make BPAY payments to Biller Code 17301

Financial Services Debit Authority

Financial services payment (Debit file)

Transfer from clients' cash accounts to an account previously nominated by your office. Transfer will appear as one payment.

 

General Withdrawal Authority

BPAY payments (Debit file)

BPAY payments to any external biller using unique biller reference numbers.

 

External multi payments (Debit file)

Transfer from multiple client accounts to multiple external accounts.

 

How do I make a bulk transaction?

To make a bulk payment from your client’s CMA:

  1. Log in to Adviser Online
  2. Click Payments and select Bulk payments from the left-hand menu
  3. Download the applicable template via the Download templates button. Please make sure you use the correct template (e.g. only include financial services payments in a ‘Financial services payment’ template).
  4. Complete the details of your transactions, taking note of the form guidelines found by holding your mouse over the red arrows. Ensure the file details are correct.
  5. If you're debiting from multiple CMAs, insert additional rows (up to 3,000) above the text stating ‘END OF FILE’. The transaction list must end with 'END OF LIFE'.
  6. Once complete, save the template as a CSV file.
  7. Select Upload file to submit your completed template
  8. Enter the processing date and select Proceed to review
  9. Confirm the transaction details are correct
  10. Enter the password generated by your online security token and select Authorise. Note: Depending on the level of authority granted, some bulk transactions require dual authorisation.
  11. If the details are incorrect, select Back to upload a new file or start again. 

A confirmation screen will then appear to show the file has been uploaded successfully. 

Tips for making ASIC and ATO payments

  • The relevant ‘Customer reference number’ fields in the templates should contain the unique customer identifier:
    • On your client’s ASIC invoice, this is the Customer Reference
    • On your client’s ATO invoice, this is the Payment Reference Number.  
  • The Customer reference number won’t be validated, so please take care when completing this field as an incorrect reference may result in the receiver not recognising the payment.
  • Once created, the CSV file shouldn’t be re-opened in Excel as this will cause re-formatting issues with the customer reference number. The payment will still be sent if all other validations are successful.
  • The ATO imposes an incoming crediting limit of $99,999.99. Any amount greater than this will generate an "amount missing or invalid" error message. To process larger amounts, you can add multiple lines to debit the same account up to $99,999.99 per transaction.

Tips for financial services payments

If using the ’Financial services payment (Debit file)’ template:

  • the payment will only be successful if the bank account details entered match the nominated fee bank account provided at the time of registration
  • the funds will be received in the end account as one consolidated amount.

Making bulk payments between a CMA and Accelerator Account

When a client appoints you to have Accelerator Account Transfer Authority on an account, they’re authorising this adviser to have access to information about their account.

Accelerator Account Transfer Authority means you can also transfer funds interchangeably between their Macquarie CMA and their Accelerator accounts using bulk transacting provided you are a registered user.

Depending on the authority and the direction of the transfer, you may need to complete specific bulk transacting files. Please see the table below for the correct file to use.

Authority

CMA to Accelerator

Accelerator to CMA

CMA: General withdrawal authority 

Accelerator: Account transfer authority

External multi

Accelerator to linked CMA

CMA: General withdrawal authority 

Accelerator: No Authority

External multi

Not available

CMA: No Authority  

Accelerator: Account transfer authority

External multi available to the Accelerator’s primary dealer only

Accelerator to linked CMA

Your clients can also transfer funds themselves via our online and mobile banking services.

How do I check the status of individual transactions from files I have uploaded?

After submitting a payment file for bulk transacting, you can check it's status by following these steps: 

  1. Log in to Adviser Online.
  2. Select Payments  and click Bulk payments from the left-hand menu.
  3. Select the Complete tab and choose to view by admin office or view all at once.
  4. Click View under Actions, select the report type and format.
  5. Click Generate to view the status report.

What the statuses mean

When you generate a bulk transaction report, you may see one of the following statuses:

  • Full – The file has been successful. All transactions have been processed.
  • Errors – Some transactions in the file were unsuccessful. Only those transactions containing errors will be withheld from processing, with all other transactions processed as requested. When downloading an error file, only the errored accounts will fail, and the rest of the file will be paid successfully.
  • File failed – The complete file has been unsuccessful. No transactions have been processed.

For troubleshooting errors and upload failures see Why is bulk transacting not working?

Why is bulk transaction not working?

There are two types of errors for bulk transacting:

We’ve also provided some troubleshooting tips for the most common issues with uploading files or processing.

Uploading file error

The following are some common causes for uploading errors.

File type: Make sure you check the file before saving as a CSV (Comma Delimited) file. Don’t re-open the file after saving as it may cause the file formatting to alter, resulting in an upload file error.

Corrupted files: Download a new version of your chosen template type for each new bulk transacting file you create. Avoid downloading and re-using a template saved on your computer.  

Duplication of files: The system will detect files containing the same number of transactions and total value submitted on the same day to prevent a file accidentally being processed twice. If a match is detected an error message display advising the "file has already been processed" you can either: 

  • split the file into two smaller files, ensuring the two new files have different total amounts, and upload these two new files
  • increase the amount of the sample row so the total file value is different to the previous one, or
  • upload the file the next business day. You’ll also need to advance the date in the file. 

Processing of yesterday’s file in error: A check is in place to prevent users uploading past files in error. If the date on the file doesn’t equal today’s date, the system will reject the file. You can then either upload the correct file, or update the date to today’s date and resubmit. 

Invalid account number error: If the account number is invalid or incomplete, make sure you: 

  • save the file as a CSV file
  • ensure the cells are aligned right
  • change the cell format to either number or text
  • prefix the account number with 0 to make a 10-digit account number.

“0” (zero) dropping off in the BSB or account number and/or The heading in line one is invalid: Either the file hasn’t been loaded as CSV, or the file has been saved as a CSV but reopened resulting in the file being converted to Excel format. Please re-save the file as a CSV.  

File processed with errors

The following are some common causes for file processing errors.

Insufficient debit authority: You’re attempting to debit an account you don’t have debiting authority on, or you don’t hold the required level of authority for the type of transaction you’re trying to perform. If you believe you hold the appropriate authority, please contact us for further review.

Insufficient client funds: The client has insufficient funds to cover the withdrawal requested. 

Invalid client account status: The CMA’s status is not open. If you require further information on why the account is not on open status, please contact us.

Invalid destination account: When submitting a financial services payment file, the bank details the uploaded file is trying to sweep fees to don’t match the details registered on file for your bulk transacting facility. Simply, the destination account submitted in the file isn’t an authorised destination account. If you want to have an additional financial services account added to your bulk transacting facility, please contact us.

Amount outside of allowable limit: This limit is related to the receiving BPAY entity. This means the biller has placed a maximum limit on funds they receive via BPAY – this maximum will usually be noted on the bill. 

No CHI clearing account exists: This error appears when attempting to debit an Accelerator account, which is not supported for certain CBT file types.

Troubleshooting tips for bulk transacting

  • Make sure the file doesn’t contain a special character such as a comma
  • Tax payment files have a maximum amount per transaction of $99,999.99 (ATO guidelines). All other transactions are $999,999,999.99.
  • You can transfer up to 3,000 withdrawals per file
  • When building the file, save the file to a local drive (desktop) as .xlsx so formatting will remain when reopening
  • We recommend users close their file before proceeding to upload. When uploading the file, the file type must be saved as a CSV.
  • Transfers from one CMA to another appear in crediting account same day. A crediting reference can’t be used to appear on crediting account.
  • It takes approximately 20 minutes for transactions to be processed. We’ll send you an email to confirm the process is complete.
  • There is a forward dating function available, up to 10 days (the nominated date must be a business day). The date on the file should match the date entered in the upload. If processing the file after 3:59 PM (Sydney time), you must use a future date. The file will then be processed on that date.
  • Payee bank accounts must be between minimum 6 and maximum 9 digits in length. If you’re payee account number has fewer than 6 digits, please add zeroes to the start of the number to make it equal to 6 digits.
  • We will only be able to process a file that corresponds to your level of bulk transacting authorisation.

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