Pay bills using Payit™

This article explains how to pay bills with Payit™ using the desktop version of FreeAgent.

If you have the FreeAgent mobile app, find out how to pay bills using Payit™ on mobile.

To schedule the bill payment for a future date, find out how to how to schedule a bill payment using Payit™ instead of following the steps below.

What is Payit™?

Payit™, a service provided by NatWest, is a fast and simple way to make payments. It uses Open Banking to let you make secure payments from your NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland or Ulster Bank business current account to any other major UK bank without leaving FreeAgent. Payit™ is free to use and no fees are applied.

Before you get started

You'll need to ensure that the person you want to pay is set up as a contact in FreeAgent before you can use Payit™ to make a payment to them.

You’ll also need to ensure that their bank account details have been added to their contact profile in FreeAgent, either when adding them as a contact or by editing the contact and then adding their bank account details.

How to pay a bill with Payit™

Navigate to the 'Bills' tab at the top of the screen.

Select the bill that you’d like to pay from the list. If you haven’t added the bill yet, select ‘Add New Bill’ and follow the steps for adding a bill in FreeAgent.

If you didn’t add a payment reference when you first added the bill, you can do so now by selecting ‘Edit bill details' in the top-right.

The payment reference of the bill is the reference that your supplier will see when you pay the bill. It can be up to 18 characters long and must only contain letters and numbers. If you don’t enter a payment reference, the bill reference will be used automatically instead.

Complete the ‘Payment Reference’ field and then select ‘Save Changes’ at the bottom of the screen.

Once the bill has been prepared, select ‘Pay now with Payit™’ in the ‘Pay this bill’ panel on the right.

Next, you’ll see a confirmation page where you'll be able to review the details of the bill before scheduling the payment. Once you’re happy that these details are correct, select ‘Continue’ in the bottom-right to proceed.

Next, you’ll be taken through your bank’s online banking login journey to authorise the payment. Follow the prompts provided by your bank. Please note that you will need to complete this step each time you pay a bill or schedule a bill payment using Payit™.

What happens next?

If the payment isn’t immediately approved, the bill will be marked as ‘Payment pending’.

If the payment attempt is unsuccessful, you’ll see a red notice on the bill within FreeAgent and you will also receive an email with the subject line: 'Notice: your bill payment was unsuccessful'. We recommend that you contact your bank directly so they can investigate the unsuccessful payment.

Once the payment has been authorised by your bank, you’ll be directed back to FreeAgent and the bill will be marked as ‘Payment approved’.

Managing the transaction in FreeAgent

Once the bill is paid, the transaction will appear in the 'Banking' section of your FreeAgent account during the next import if you have a bank feed set up. If you don’t have a bank feed set up, you will need to either upload the bank transaction to FreeAgent or enter it manually.

If you've enabled the ‘Guess’ feature in FreeAgent, the software will attempt to match the imported or uploaded transaction to the appropriate bill and mark the bill as paid. If you haven't enabled the ‘Guess’ feature, you can explain the bank transaction manually, choosing ‘Bill Payment’ as the transaction type.

If you want to edit the bill line items after the bill has been paid, you’ll need to remove the payment reference first.