Introduction

The Single Euro Payment Area (SEPA) is a newly introduced single integrated payments environment for countries within the SEPA region. This refers to all countries in the European Union, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland.

The SEPA credit transfers will be supported. This involves generating bank payment files for export which are compliant with the SEPA format. The file generated is in XML and is standardized for all the banks within the SEPA region.

Menu path

• Cash flow/Cash instruments/Maintain
• Finance/Accounts receivable/Maintain
• Finance/Accounts payable/Maintain
• HR/Human resources/Maintain
• XML/ Financial import/Accounts payable
• XML/ Financial import/Accounts receivable
• XML/Financial export/Accounts payable
• XML/Financial export/Account receivable
• System/General/Settings/Document settings
• Cash flow/Payments/Authorize
• Cash flow/Payments/Process

What has been changed

The following changes are implemented for all legislations.

1. Cash instruments

• At the maintenance for cash instruments, a field IBAN is added under the Identification section. This field supports valid International Bank Account Number (IBAN) only.
• For the BIC code field, only valid Bank Identifier Code (BIC) is allowed.
• A new section SEPA is added, with two settings Use SEPA format and Transaction grouping.
  • Use SEPA format is only available for cash instruments using EUR currency; country of the cash instrument is within SEPA region; and type of cash instrument is Bank or Credit card.
  • Transaction grouping is enabled when Use SEPA format is activated. By default, the option Grouped is selected. For more information, refer to Defining Transaction grouping for SEPA Payment Files. 
  • When Use SEPA format is activated, the BIC code and IBAN fields are mandatory.
• Change button is replaced with  button. Click this button to launch Bank settings.

• When the country of the creditor linked to the cash instrument is Austria or Poland, the BIC code field displays a drop-down list as shown in the following screen. A BIC code can be manually entered or selected from the list. The BIC code validation does not apply here.
  

Notes:

      i.    For Netherlands, the default transaction grouping option for ING Bank and ABN AMRO Bank is “Grouped”; and RABO Bank is “Single”.

     ii.    For France, the IBAN field is alphanumerical and does not support special characters or spaces.

    iii.    For Switzerland, BIC and IBAN codes were stored together in the BIC code field, prior to this project. With the new implementation, values which were entered earlier will remain displayed at the BIC code field. Validation of the BIC code field is only applied when the Save button is clicked on.

2. Maintain bank account numbers

• Applicable for bank accounts linked to accounts payable, accounts receivable and resources.
• Two new fields for valid IBAN and BIC code are added.
• These fields are not mandatory.
  

3. XML Financial import/ export

• Applicable for accounts payable and accounts receivable.
• XML tags for IBAN and BIC codes are added in the XML file generated by the financial export function. These tags are available when the information is defined in the Maintain bank account numbers function of accounts payable and receivable.
• During financial import, valid values in these XML tags will be imported and saved in the Maintain bank account numbers function of accounts payable and receivable.
  
  

4. Document settings

• For Payroll slips, two new fields for BIC and IBAN are added under the Net block.
  
  
  
  Note: Does not apply for Netherlands, Germany and Austria.
  
• For the Payment document, two new fields for BIC code and IBAN bank account number are added under the Address block. These fields retrieve the BIC and IBAN of the payee’s bank account.
  
  
  
• Two new fields for Company BIC code and Company IBAN bank account number are added under the Total block. These fields retrieve the BIC and IBAN of the cash instrument used in the payment.
  
  
  
• For the Payment specification document, two new fields for BIC code and IBAN bank account number are added under the Address block, for retrieving the BIC and IBAN of the payee’s bank account. Two new fields for Company BIC code and Company IBAN bank account number are added for retrieving the BIC and IBAN of the cash instrument used for the payment.
  
  
  
• Under the Total block, two new fields for BIC code and IBAN bank account number are added for retrieving the BIC and IBAN of the payee’s bank account. Two new fields for Company BIC code and Company IBAN bank account number are added for retrieving the BIC and IBAN of the cash instrument used for the payment.
  
  

5. Process payments

• When processing payments, the bank payment file, for cash instruments which have the Use SEPA format setting activated, is generated based on the SEPA format. This is for bank export files.
• Criteria of records which will be included in the SEPA bank payment file:
  • Transaction currency of the payments being processed must be in EUR.
  • In the bank account linked to the creditor for the payment, the Country must be within SEPA region and Currency must be EUR.
  • If either the country and currency fields of the bank account are empty, the Country or Currency defined at the account maintenance is taken.
  • The IBAN and BIC code of the bank account linked to the creditor for the payment must be available.
• The SEPA format file generated is in XML format and is based on the Transaction grouping setting:
  • For Single, each Payment information block, i.e. the XML group <PmtInf>, will have one Transaction information block, i.e. XML group <CdtTrfTxInf>. One XML file is generated, containing multiple Payment information block.
  • For Grouped, each Payment information block may have several Transaction information block. One XML file is generated for each Payment information block.
  • For Mixed, each Payment information block may have several Transaction information block. One XML file is generated, containing multiple Payment information block.
• A sample SEPA bank payment file is as follows:
  
  

Notes:

      i.    A key value in the Payment information block is the payment date of the records.

     ii.   At Accounts maintenance for accounts payable, the Group payments setting can be activated. This updates the payment date for all records selected with the current date and all records will be grouped and generated in one payment file.

    iii.   If payment records do not meet the criteria for SEPA bank format, a normal bank format file is generated for these records.

   iv.  SEPA has been implemented according to the standard SEPA definition as used in, for example, The Netherlands and Belgium. Banks in other countries that use this same SEPA definition will be able to accept the SEPA payment files that Exact Globe produces, however Exact Software has only tested and therefore only supports SEPA for The Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland. For other countries or particular banks within a country, a deviation from this standard may be applicable causing the SEPA file not to be accepted by those banks. Exact will research on such further localization for future product updates of Exact Globe.

Related document

• Creating and Maintaining Cash Instruments
• Release 380: Support for Swiss Data Carrier Exchange (Swiss Banking)
• Release 390: New Fields Added to Payroll Slips Layout