Comparison
Zefty vs keying payments in your bank portal
Every Canadian business bank portal lets you enter vendor payments one at a time. It works, until the list of vendors grows and someone has to retype the same amounts into Zoho Books. Here is how portal entry compares with one Zefty file upload.
Portals such as RBC Express, TD Web Business Banking, BMO Online Banking for Business, Scotia ConnectDigital Banking, CIBC Cash Management Online, AccèsD Affaires and the others all support two ways to pay vendors: entering each payment on screen, or uploading a CPA 005 EFT 1464 file that carries all of them. Entering on screen is fine for a few payments. It becomes a bottleneck when a run contains twenty or fifty bills, when amounts must match invoices to the cent, and when each payment then has to be recorded in Zoho Books.
Zefty does not replace your bank portal. It replaces the on-screen typing. You select bills in Zefty, generate one file for your bank, upload it in the portal, approve it there according to your signing rules, and the payments are already recorded in Zoho Books. The comparison below is between those two workflows.
| Criteria | Bank portal entry | Zefty |
|---|---|---|
| Setup time | Vendor payees are created one by one in the portal, and again whenever a vendor changes accounts. | Minutes: enter your originator ID and account details, connect Zoho Books. Vendor banking details come from Zoho Books at every sync. |
| Time per payment run | Proportional to the number of payments: each one is selected, keyed, checked and confirmed, then entered again in Zoho Books. | Roughly the same whether the run has five bills or fifty: select, generate, upload, approve. |
| Error risk | Amounts and payees are typed by hand twice, once in the portal and once in Zoho Books. Transposed digits are common. | Amounts come from the bill in Zoho Books; vendor accounts come from the vendor record. Nothing is retyped. |
| Compliance validation | The portal validates what you key, but not whether it matches the invoice or the books. | The file follows CPA 005 and your bank's requirements, and every payment is tied to a specific Zoho Books bill. |
| Zoho Books write-back | Manual, after the fact, from the portal confirmation. | Automatic: a vendor payment is recorded for each bill as soon as the file is generated, including partial amounts. |
| Audit trail and PDF | Portal confirmations and whatever you export from the bank. | Each file is kept with its number, total and dates, a readable PDF report of every payment, and a history of paid bills linked to the payment in Zoho Books. |
| Partial payments | Key a different amount and remember to apply it to the right bill in Zoho Books. | Enter the amount to pay on the bill; the file and the Zoho Books payment both use it and the balance stays open on the bill. |
| Multi-organization | Separate portal logins and separate typing for each company. | One Zefty login, one organization per company, each with its own bank setup and Zoho Books connection (Team plan and up). |
| Cost | Portal fees set by your bank, plus the staff time of keying every payment twice. | From $29 per month in CAD (Starter). Team $43, Premium $299. $14 per additional user per month. Taxes extra. Bank fees unchanged. |
The verdict
If you pay fewer than a handful of vendors a month and never need to reconcile with accounting software, the bank portal alone is enough. If you run accounts payable in Zoho Books and pay vendors regularly, keying each payment twice is the most expensive step in your process. Zefty turns it into one upload and one approval, with the books already updated. See the bank pages for what to expect in your portal.
Bank portal vs Zefty: common questions
Yes. Zefty produces the payment file; your bank portal is where you upload it and approve it. Your existing signing rules, limits and dual approvals continue to apply in the portal. Zefty never moves money on its own and never holds your bank login; it only prepares the file and updates Zoho Books.
It removes a source of error rather than a source of fraud. Amounts and vendor accounts come from Zoho Books instead of being typed, so transposed digits and wrong payees are far less likely. Approval still happens in the bank portal under your controls. Vendor banking details stored in Zefty are encrypted at rest.
Banks typically price EFT origination as a cash management service, with a per-file or per-item fee set out in your agreement. Those fees apply whether you key payments on screen or upload a file, and Zefty does not change them. Ask your business account manager for the fee schedule that applies to your account.
No. A vendor paid from a Zefty file receives an ordinary EFT credit to the same account they gave you, on the payment date you chose. The only difference they may notice is the sender name on the deposit, which is the business name you entered at setup, shown the way your bank displays it.
One upload instead of fifty screens
Generate your bank's EFT 1464 file from Zoho Books bills and keep the approvals you already have in your portal. Plans from $29 per month in CAD.