Ok I didn't lose $10k like the previous poster. But I'm still embarrassed about f'ing up.
Paid 4 bills today and I accidentally forgot to future date 1 of them for May 12th.
So $473 cash went out of my bank account 28 days early..costing me $1.60 in interest not saved on a mortgage instead.
I know it's not much but it's still eating me up 10 hours later. Need to remind myself that it's a good thing I had access to almost $500 early and not be stretched.
You are allowed to post-date checks? And the vendor will honor a post-dated check? If we do it in the states, you can expect your check to be cashed just as if it had today's date on it.
Some education in this post is required.... it wasn't paid by check, but was paid by a special type of EFT.
Down here there's an online billing system run by the banks called BPAY ... started in 1997 and was set up by the 4 major banks in Australia.
The way it works is that each biller - insurance companies, utilities, government, but has been extended now to any corporate vendor, is allocated a unique 4-6 digit code which identifies them in the Payment System (we don't have original names in the banking system - the whole electronic funds transfer architecture connecting all financial institutions is simply called "The Payments System")
On your bill, you are personally allocated a unique Customer Reference Number code by the vendor which is listed on your bill and identifies you as the customer who is paying the bill.
You then simply login into your internet banking with your bank, type in the Biller Code and CRN and make your payment electronically - in the same manner as an EFT with SWIFT/acc number details.
The biller on the other end receives on their end a bulk credit from their bank 1-2 days later for all the people who paid bills on that day.
They also get a file listing all of the individual credits and CRNs so they can match and reconcile automatically with their receipting / billing system and identify you as having paid your particular bill.
This works better than EFT, because EFT credits to an account more than likely need to be manually matched off by a human accountant if reference details haven't been filled out optimally by the customer.
Of course, my fuck up was not scheduling payment to be deducted on the due date but rather paying it immediately.
https://www.bpay.com.au/About-BPAY/Overview.aspx