Howto use SEPA Direct Debit

Feature Howto Draft
#1

I just learned about the Howto category and propose adding a “direct debit howto” there. Here is a draft, with still some open issues:

Questions:

  • It looks like only a valid mandate is required and party.payment_direct_debit ignored. Is this correct?
  • What is party.payment_direct_debit used for then?

I want customers pay via direct debit. I understood, that I need to

Setup

  • Requried modules:
    • accounting_payment
    • SEPA only: accounting_payment_sepa
  • Add a Bank Account to your Company
    (Company→Companies→[NAME]→Banking→Add→…)
  • SEPA only: Set the SEPA Identifier for your Company
    (Company→Companies→[NAME]→Identifiers→Add→SEPA Creditor Identifier)

Once per Customer

  • Add a Bank Account to the party
    (Party→Parties→[NAME]→Banking→Add→…)
  • Enable direct debit for the party
    (Party→Parties→[NAME]→Accounting→ Check “Direct Debit”)
  • SEPA only: Add SEPA direct debit mandate
    (Banking→SEPA Mandates→Add→…)
    • “Identification”: ???
    • remaining entries as required

Invoicing

Whether an invoice is paid by direct debit is not decided when creating the invoice, but depends on whether “direct debit” is set for the party and whether there is a valid mandate for the party.

Anyhow you might want to add a Payment Term “Direct Debit” (Remainder to be paid in 0 days) to explicitly state this.

Direct Debit Payment

  • Go to Finance→Payments→Lines to Pay→Receivalbe with Mandate
  • Select the payments you want to direct debit
  • Run the “Pay Lines” Wizard from the Actions button.
    Note: The wizard is only available if there is at least one payment line selected.
  • Select date of payment, select accounting info
  • New payments are generated and avilalbe in Finance→Payments→Payments

There still seems something missing I managed to create an empty XML message (0 bytes).

  • Go to Finance→Payments→Payments

    • Optional (depending on your workflow and separation of duties) Approve payments
    • Process payments
    • This will create a payment group to be fed to the SEPA message

  • Go to Finance→Payments→SEPA Messages

    • Select New
    • Type: OUT
    • Origin “Payment Group”, select the respective Payment Group

  • Export the direct debit file for online-banking software how to do this

2 Likes
How to use SEPA direct debit for customers?
#2

Yes, when you want to initiate a direct debit from your customer, you need a mandate.

It is to mark your supplier to be allowed to initiate a direct debit to you.

#3

Great, that’s a good initiative and we kindly appreciate it.

If you want to write a howto please read the howto guideliness..

Please add links to the demo server by using the following link structure:

https://demo.tryton.org/model/account.fiscalyear;name=%22Fiscal%20Years%22

Where account.fiscalyear is the internal model name and Fiscal%20Years is the name to be shown. Note that %20 is replaced with an space.

Also make sure to use the menu structure as name of the link. So following the previous example it should be:

Financial -> Configuration -> Fiscal Years -> Fiscal Years

If you use any screenshot please use the latest version demo server to create them.

As @udono replied direct debit check is used to indicate that the supplier is doing direct debit to the company. For doing direct debit to a customer you should have a signed mandate from the company indicating the bank account.

I do not think this section is required. You should only focus on documenting the SEPA generation.

This is mandatory on Tryton. If there is no separation of roles the same user can approve and process.

Once you are on the list of SEPA messages you will see a button to download the file.
If the file you generated is empty the field may be hidden.

#4

There is no more the need to set a name on links.

#5

There are still some step(s) missing before. When following my description, I’m not ending up with a SEPA document.

Though it might not be necessary for you, being an expert, it is required for understanding the process - as this is what many people might think.

While I understand you want to have high quality content: The requirements are quite demanding, and fulfilling them is very time-consuming. This is quite a huge hurdle to take. I’m actually rethinking whether I should spend more time on this How-to if it’s on danger to be put on the huge pile of never-finished documentation just because it’s not meeting 150% quality requirements.

How to use SEPA direct debit for customers?
#6

Then just mention that in the list of lines to pay you have all the pending moves from the invoices.
I prefer to have two small how-tos than a bigger one :wink:

Welcome to Tryton: we value the quality. As we have a good software the documentation should be in conconrdance.

Sorry for putting the presure. As you started documenting using menu I just wanted to explain the format we are using to fully match the requirements.

I may understand you are still learning the process so once we have a valid starting post others may complete your work. (I will do)

This is the main reason to use the forum for writing howto: The content is interactive and if there is something that can be improved others can do.

JFR, I just updated a how-to that I writen some time ago thanks to this sugestion:

#7

@pokoli How can we finish this guide?

  1. As written above, some small steps are missing. At least, when following this guide, I ended up with an empty XML document.
  2. How can I (or you) edit my above text? I fail to find the button for doing so.

This should be fine, too.

Accepted. :slight_smile:

So this is just informational?

#8

Probably you did not set the right format for the journal or you did not select any payment to include on the group.

On the down part of the inital post there is a pencil icon which can be used for editing

#9

No. IIRC it separates the payables from the direct debits. For the payables you need to take action to pay them, for the direct debits your supplier takes action. It is used to help the user avoiding double payments. (See the account_payment module and grep for direct_debit.)