DocTrail™ a new world-first “FinTech” disruptor in banking

Jesse Weinberg

FNB has launched DocTrail™ a new innovative banking solution that enables FNB Business customers to upload and attach supporting documentation to online payments, exerting greater control over the daily running of their businesses.

DocTrail™ drastically reduces the administrative burdens that most businesses face when it comes to payment authorisation and audits by letting them digitise their payment authorisation process as well as requisitions. This gives their auditors easy access to download historical transactions along with their supporting documents.

Jesse Weinberg, Product Head for Business Accounts at FNB says, “DocTrail™ is a world-first because customers can now upload and store source documents such as supplier invoices when making payments online through their bank.” 

“What really makes it unique is that apart from allowing businesses to track exactly what payments were made for, DocTrail™ can be configured to grant multiple users access to authorise payments. Users can download and view source documents before authorising funds to leave the bank account. This effectively represents and replaces the old-world process of manually signing or dual-signing invoices, payment requisition forms and cheques – all the while solving the corporate governance requirements of "segregation of duty" and "isolation of responsibility" as set out in the King Code.”

Weinberg says DocTrail™ was designed to save businesses time and money by considering both their operational and audit objectives. It allows businesses to solve the day-to-day challenge of requesting and authorising payments in a business; maintaining easily accessible and robust records of such payments and their supporting documents, should auditors require sight of them. FNB stores the customers’ documents for five years from the date of upload, reducing the risk of loss in a business often resulting from incorrect filing and indexing of important documents.

DocTrail™ is easy to use:

• By clicking and viewing an attached document, business owners and financial managers will know exactly what a particular payment relates to. For example, getting more information about the payment terms or details of the invoice in order to make an informed decision as to whether a payment should be approved or rejected. 
• The authorisation is digitally stored, showing all actions performed by users in a comprehensive audit trail of user actions performed, and of related attached documents – “Document Trail”.
• Once the payment is complete, a copy of the supporting documentation is securely stored online, making it easy to recollect historical information pertaining to the payment. 

“DocTrail™ is a great example of how large banks can also compete in the highly contested and fast-changing global FinTech arena that is seeing many small technology start-ups exploit opportunities in the financial services sector, often as a result of blind-spots by the larger established players.”

DocTrail™ is available to all FNB Business Banking customers through the FNB Online Banking Enterprise.