Making payments via Akahu is one of the ways you can pay your employees with PayHero. Learn more about paying via Akahu below, or for more information on the options available, see our article: How do I pay my employees?
Paying via Akahu provides a fast and convenient way to pay your staff. With Akahu active, a single payment from your account to FlexiTime will be generated. We will then pay your employees (and any other payees) via an online Account-to-Account transaction.
Activating Payments via Akahu
To start making payments with Akahu, you'll need to connect PayHero with Akahu. You can do so from within PayHero, under Manage > Integrations. You'll also need to ensure you've selected Akahu as your preferred payment method under Manage > Settings > Payroll Settings.
You can learn more about setting up the Akahu Integration and find answers to commonly asked questions here: Akahu Integration
Paying Wages
After Processing a Pay Run, you'll be prompted with a pop-up screen to complete the Akahu payment process. When you're ready to proceed with making your payment, click Send Pay.
Until you click the Send Pay button, you can cancel the Akahu payment process at any time if you change your mind. If a pay is 'Marked as Sent', you can restart the Akahu payment from the Payroll > Sent section later.
Alternatively, if you'd prefer not to use Akahu at all for a particular pay run, you could instead use the bank batch files if you'd prefer. You can learn more about this functionality in PayHero through our support article: Making Payments with Bank Batch Files.
Paying Tax
Tax payments must be included at the time of processing the pay. PayHero will pass these payments on to IRD by the due date (20th of the following month).
Akahu Payment Status
Once a pay has been processed using Akahu you're able to track the status of the payment transactions from the Payroll > Sent section of PayHero via the Payments tab.
There are several stages of an Akahu transaction, and a single pay can reflect any combination of the statuses below for each recipient. These stages each indicate the following and are reflected by the associated icon:
Successful Payment - A green checkbox will appear at the top of the pay, and individual green checks will appear beside each payee. You'll also receive an email notification letting you know the payments were successful.
This means all payments have been successfully processed via Akahu. Some individual payees can have successes, while others have failures - see below for how to retry failed payments.
Awaiting Approval - A yellow warning will appear at the top of the pay, and a mix of success and warning icons appear beside each payee.
This means the pay was sent in PayHero and processed to Akahu, but some of the payments require approval via Akahu. This may be due to your bank's authorisation settings (this may only occur the first time you try to pay this payee), or due to your Akahu settings. You should receive an email from Akahu prompting you to complete this process.
Awaiting Payment - A yellow warning will appear at the top of the pay, and no icons appear beside each payee.
This means the pay was sent in PayHero, but the Akahu process was cancelled at the time of sending. This pay could then be processed through Pay Now later, if desired, following the steps under Paying Wages above.
Failed Payment - A red warning checkbox will appear at the top of the pay, and individual red warnings will appear beside each payee whose payment has failed. You'll also receive an email notification letting you know that some or all of your payments have failed.
This means the pay has been sent in PayHero, and the Pay Now function was attempted, but the transaction couldn't be processed by Akahu. Note that a pay could have a mix of successful and failed payments.
You can try to resend any failed payments via Akahu using the Retry Failed Payments button on the bottom left of the pay.
In the case that the pay contains a mixture of successful and failed payments, the successful transactions will not be reprocessed - only the failed payments will be retried.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a transaction limit?
Is there a transaction limit?
Yes. These limits will prevent payments being made via Akahu if your payroll exceeds your bank's supported threshold.
We recommend checking these figures against your typical pay run total to ensure your bank can support your needs, and choose a different payment method if required.
Key thresholds include:
ANZ - $10,000 per pay.
ASB - $10,000 per pay.
BNZ - $50,000 per day. Note that this is a cumulative total for all open banking transactions from your account per day.
Westpac - $30,000 per day. Note that this is a cumulative total for all open banking transactions from your account per day.
Do transaction fees apply?
Do transaction fees apply?
Yes. A 35c per payee fee applies to all pays processed via the Akahu integration. This fee will be included at the time of processing the pay.
What time will payments be made to employees?
What time will payments be made to employees?
PayHero makes payments to payroll recipients twice a day, in the early afternoon and late evening. When your employees will be paid depends on the pay date and the time of day your pay was processed via the Akahu pop-up.
Future pay date - Where the pay date is later than the day the pay is processed via Akahu, employees will be paid at noon on the pay date.
Evening payment - Where the pay date is the same as the day you process the Akahu payment, pays sent between 10am in the morning and 7pm in the evening will be processed that night. Processing begins at 9pm.
Afternoon payment - Where the pay date is the same as the day you process the Akahu payment, pays sent before 10am in the morning (or after 7pm the prior day) will be paid to employees in the afternoon. Processing begins at 12pm.
After processing begins, the time employees receive the payment will depend on inter-bank clearance periods.
Can I use the same Akahu account for multiple companies?
Can I use the same Akahu account for multiple companies?
Yes. PayHero supports multi-account connections via Akahu. If you manage multiple companies that share the same bank credentials, you can link them all to one Akahu account for streamlined payment processing.
What if I have multiple bank accounts connected to Akahu?
What if I have multiple bank accounts connected to Akahu?
If your Akahu account is authorised to process payments from multiple bank accounts, PayHero will automatically select which account to pay from based on the bank account set in your PayHero account via Manage > Settings > Payroll Settings.
If no bank account is specified in your company settings, you will see a selection pop-up when processing your pay. This allows you to choose which specific account you wish the funds to be drawn from for that pay run.