You can now upload BACS Standard 18, BACS Standard 18 Payment Lines, and Bacs Active (EaziPay) and SmartDebit Direct files directly within Access PaySuite. Files up to 130MB and 1.2 million rows are supported.

BACS Direct is a new tab within Direct Debit, alongside Overview, File Upload, BACS, and Cancellation Templates. It has its own navigation for Home, Outgoing Files, Incoming Files, Audit, and Exports, with Approvals, Disbursals, and Administrator appearing only for users or clients with the relevant permissions/configuration.

The Home screen shows up to five summary cards, tailored to what you're able to act on, so you always know what needs attention before your next cut-off:

The Outstanding Tasks section displays pending actions based on your permissions, and role in the approval process (where applicable). Tasks are listed in descending order, meaning the newest tasks (most recently uploaded files) appear first. This ensures that you can easily prioritise the most recent tasks that require attention.

The Outgoing Files screen shows every BACS file uploaded for your organisation, with search by filename, and filters for status, uploader, and date range. The grid shows Uploaded Date, Filename (with a file-type badge), Lines, Uploaded By, Approvals Outstanding, Status, and an action button — Review & Fix File, Review & Submit File, Review & Approve File, or Review File, depending on the file's status and your permissions.

To upload a file, go to Outgoing Files and select Upload a New File (only shown if you have upload permission). Once you've chosen the file type and selected your file, it's automatically validated — checking format, the modulus check, processing date, SUN, and bank details — before you can submit it. Cut-off time and processing date rules are enforced both at upload and again at submission.

If a file fails validation, you're guided through a fix flow rather than having to start again. This covers a missing processing date, a missing SUN, missing bank details, and files that are validated but flagged with errors within individual transaction lines. This is also where duplicate files are detected automatically, so you don't accidentally submit the same file twice.

Before submitting, you can review a file's full content line by line. Once you're happy with it, you can submit the file to BACS, or remove it beforehand if you need to withdraw it.

Further to successful validation, clicking a file's Review action button opens the File Review Drawer, with three tabs:

File Summary — file name, SUN, upload time, and a breakdown of debit and credit lines and values, originating sort code and account number, and any remarks from validation (for example, confirming the file's ready for Final Submit).

File Lines — the full list of payment lines in the file (sequence, destination and originating sort code/account, transaction code, amount, narrative), downloadable as XLSX. DDI lines, where present, are shown separately.

Audit — a complete timeline of every action taken against this specific file, from upload through validation, fixes, and submission, with the date, the user (or "System" for automated steps), and the action taken.

The Incoming Files screen shows BACS return report files received from the bank — ADDACS, ARUCS, ARUDD, AUDACC, AUDDIS, AUDREJ, AWACS, DDICA and INPUT files — in one read-only list. You can filter by SUN, file type, date range and downloaded status, download a file's raw XML, or view it as a rendered HTML report without leaving Access PaySuite. The Home screen also shows your most recently received incoming files alongside your outgoing file status, with a link through to the full list.

When a download is too large to return immediately — such as a payment lines export over 10,000 rows, or a list of errors over 1,000 rows — it's queued as a background export rather than making you wait. The Exports screen shows all exports you've triggered, with a Download button as soon as each one is ready. Only your own exports are shown here.

The Administrator screen is where you manage everything for BACS Direct at an organisational level — who can use it, how it notifies people, and how sensitive data is displayed. It's visible only to users with Can Administer permission, across three tabs: Permissions, Email Notifications, and Settings. If you're part of an organisation group, a banner reminds you that changes here only apply to the currently active client — switch organisation in Evo first if you need to update another client in your group.

The Permissions tab is where you control access to BACS Direct for every user in your organisation, across four permissions: BACS Direct Enabled (access to the module at all), Can Administer (this screen), Can Upload (upload and submit files), and Can Approve (approve files uploaded by someone else). A reference panel on the tab explains each permission. Turning off BACS Direct Enabled for a user automatically clears their other three permissions. As a safeguard, the user who uploaded a file can never approve that same file themselves, even if they hold Can Approve

From the same Permissions tab, you can set how many approvers are required before a file can be submitted (between 0 and 5). This is capped live to the number of users who currently hold Can Approve, so you can't require more approvers than you have people able to approve. If you reduce the required number while files are already mid-workflow, you'll see a warning before saving — changes don't affect files already pending approval under the previous approvers, and files already sitting in Ready to Submit status won't retroactively require approval if you raise the number from zero; those would need to be re-uploaded.

The Permissions tab is where you control access to BACS Direct for every user in your organisation, across four permissions: BACS Direct Enabled (access to the module at all), Can Administer (this screen), Can Upload (upload and submit files), and Can Approve (approve files uploaded by someone else). A reference panel on the tab explains each permission. Turning off BACS Direct Enabled for a user automatically clears their other three permissions. As a safeguard, the user who uploaded a file can never approve that same file themselves, even if they hold Can Approve.

From the same Permissions tab, you can set how many approvers are required before a file can be submitted (between 0 and 5). This is capped live to the number of users who currently hold Can Approve, so you can't require more approvers than you have people able to approve. If you reduce the required number while files are already mid-workflow, you'll see a warning before saving — changes don't affect files already pending approval under the previous approvers, and files already sitting in Ready to Submit status won't retroactively require approval if you raise the number from zero; those would need to be re-uploaded.

The Email Notifications tab lets you manage who receives email alerts for four kinds of activity: a new incoming BACS file being received, an outgoing file being submitted, a file's bank export status (completing or failing), and a new Disbursal Report being generated. Recipients can be subscribed to any combination of the four notification types.

The Settings tab lets you mask bank account details across BACS Direct for all your users. When enabled, sort codes and account numbers are shown partially masked in the File Content Review Payment Lines tab (including its PDF and XLSX exports) and on the Incoming Files View HTML screen and PDF download. Destination account details within raw XML are not obfuscated. This same setting is also what masks bank details on Disbursal transactions, covered under FM SUN disbursals below.

If your organisation requires governance and sign-off before BACS files are submitted, you can now configure and enforce a multi-approver approval workflow — entirely within Access PaySuite. Approval requirements are set up on the Administrator screen, covered above.

Once a file is validated, an uploader can submit it for approval and choose which named approvers should review it. Approvers are notified by email as soon as a file is submitted for their review.

Named approvers see all files awaiting their approval on a dedicated Approvals screen. Approving a file records the approver's decision, and once the last required approval is given, the file is automatically submitted to BACS. Rejecting a file instead moves it to a Rejected status.

Access PaySuite additionally supports SD Direct files, alongside BACS Standard 18, BACS Standard 18 Payment Lines, and Bacs Active (EaziPay).

SD Direct CSV files can be uploaded by legacy SmartDebit clients, or others who find this format suitable for their submissions. They go through the same validation as other BACS file types, plus a dedicated fix flow for a missing pay date, as opposed to processing date used by the other file types.

Individual rows in an SD Direct CSV file that fail validation can be corrected or deleted inline, without re-uploading the whole file — available for files with 50 or fewer error rows. Multiple errored rows can also be bulk-removed in one action, and the file is automatically revalidated after edits are made.

BACS Direct includes FM SUN support and disbursement handling, giving you visibility of how funds were disbursed against your FM SUN(s). The Disbursals tab is available where your organisation has FM SUNs configured for BACS Direct.

The Disbursals list shows Date, Status, SUN, Direct Debits, ARUDDs Deducted, DDICAs, Direct Credits, ARUCs, Manual Adjustments, Net DDICA Impact, and Amount Disbursed for each disbursal. You can filter by SUN, status, or date range.

Viewing a disbursal opens its detail view, with a summary panel covering the same figures shown in the list. Underneath, four tabs — Direct Debits, Direct Debit Rejections/Reversals, Direct Credits, and Direct Credit Rejections/Reversals — show live transaction counts and a breakdown of Reference, Amount, BACS Processing Date, Account Name, Account Number, Sort Code, and Transaction Code for each transaction.

You can download both the Disbursals list and an individual disbursal's detail as XLSX or CSV. Exports of 10,000 rows or fewer (list) or 10,000 combined transactions or fewer (detail) download immediately; anything larger is queued as a background export, with a prompt to check the Exports screen once it's ready rather than waiting on screen.

The update will be applied to everyone on our SaaS platform on 01/09/2026.