Automatically process payments – direct debit and transfers

The best way to process payments is to use a bank file to let the system automatically do it for you. Whether the payment method was direct debit or transfer doesn’t matter for automatic processing.

Direct debits will not always be successful the first time. The balance of a relation’s bank account might not be enough, the relation might have reported the direct debit as incorrect, or the relation might have reversed the payment. You should be able to see these problems in the online banking environment.
With transfers, payments cannot be reversed, but some relations may not pay the invoice timely. This is why these payments need to be processed as well, so that you can take action when an invoice is unpaid.

In short

Processing payments automatically means that you download a bank file from the online banking environment with all payments. You then upload this file into the Financial Application. The system will try to match each payment to an invoice. The result is a list of those matches, which you can check before confirming.

Bank file

To process payments automatically, you need a bank file in CAMT.053 (bank transactions file) format. This file is a bank statement, which contains a record of all incoming and outgoing transactions. You can download this file from the online banking environment. If this file format is not made available by your bank, you can use a different file format such as CSV. NB: upload the original, unchanged file. This means that you cannot edit the file in a program such as Excel. It is possible to process payments from multiple bank statements simultaneously.

Upload bank statement

Go to the element ‘Bank transactions’. Click on the bank account number on which the payments were received.

Click on ‘Upload’ in the toolbar. Select one of the following file formats behind ‘Type’:

  • CAMT
  • Zip of CAMT files
  • ING CSV

Upload the bank file behind ‘File’. Then click on ‘import’. You will be redirected to the overview of the account number. There, you can find the uploaded bank statement. Of each bank statement, the overview displays the first transaction date, the number of transactions and the date. Processed bank statements can be recognized by the green check mark under ‘Processed’. For newly uploaded bank statements, this column is still empty.

Click on the bank statement number to view all its transactions. Of each transaction, the overview displays the booking date, the description (transaction), the amount and the contra account. NB: Many banks deposit direct debits into your account at once. For example, if you executed 30 direct debits of 10 euros, you will see the amount of 300 euros on your bank statement once (rather than 30 times 10 euros).

Processing payments

To process the payments from one bank statement, first click on the bank statement number in the overview and then click on ‘Process’ in the toolbar. If you want to process the payments from all (not yet processed) uploaded bank statements, click on ‘Process all’ in the toolbar of the overview. You will see a new screen with show that:

  • the system has reviewed all transactions from the bank statement and tried to link them to sent invoices. To do this, the system tried to match invoice numbers in the description or made matches based on a combination of bank account number, name and amount.
  • All matched transactions are displayed at the top under ‘Automatically linked to invoice’.
  • All transactions for which the system wasn’t able to find an invoice are displayed at the bottom of the overview under ‘Unlinked payments’.

Automatically linked to invoice

The table with automatically linked transactions contains the following columns:

  • Check – All transactions automatically have a check mark. When you are reviewing the matches made by the system, you can choose to uncheck transactions that you don’t want to process.
  • Date – The transaction date
  • Invoice number – The invoice number that, in most cases, was mentioned in the description of the transaction and based on which the transaction was linked to the invoice.
  • Subject – The subject of the invoice
  • Client – The name of the relation
  • Account number – The bank account number of the relation
  • Amount – The amount of the transaction
  • Type – This column displays the type of the transaction. This can be a payment or a reversal. Reversals always have a negative amount.

Check whether the matches made by the system are all correct. If a transaction is matched to the wrong invoice, uncheck the box in the first column.

For reversals, the reversal transaction as well as the initial direct debit will be included in the overview. Both transaction should have a check mark. The system recognizes this situation and will mark the invoice in question as reversed.

Unlinked payments

This table contains all transaction that the system was unable to link to an invoice. The reason is usually that the invoice number in the description is missing or incorrect. This is also the reason why this table will only ever include transaction linked to invoices with transfer requests and no direct debits. The table displays the booking date of the transaction, the description of the transaction, the amount and the contra account.

Under ‘Invoice’, you will find a drop-down menu for each transaction. When you click on this menu, you will see a search field. Type the name of the relation of the invoice number to find the invoice that matches with this transaction. When you find it, select the invoice. Repeat for each transaction.

When every transaction is checked and linked to an invoice, select ‘Mark this statement as processed’ at the bottom of the page. Then click on ‘process this statement’.

You will be redirected back to the overview of bank statements. In the column ‘Processed’, you will now find a check mark behind the processed bank statements.

Under ‘Invoicing’ in the Financial tree, the paid invoices have been moved to ‘Paid’. The reversals and invoices that haven’t been paid yet remain in ‘Sent’. For reversals, the system automatically generates outstanding items. For unpaid invoices, you can send reminders or exhortations.