This article will discuss the transfer of electronic invoices for consumers from another software to Procountor, when there is an existing valid invoicer announcement.
General information
If the company has sent electronic invoices or direct payment data from an other software than Procountor previously, it's possible that there is still an existing invoicer announcement regarding these in the bank. With the invoicer announcement the company has notified their consumer clients that the company provides the option for electronic invoices or electronic invoices and direct payments.
If the company has such existing valid invoicer announcement, that has been created through the other software, there is no need to do a new invoicer announcement through Procountor but this existing invoicer announcement and the existing receiver info notifications can be moved to Procountor
Important remarks
In order to move an existing invoicer announcement into Procountor, the company must know what information this invoicer annoucement includes. For example these points are particularly important:
- Is the invoicer announcement definitely still valid.
- What is the company's electronic invoice address and electronic invoice operator on this invoicer announcement.
- What is the payment instruction ID (PaymentInstructionIdentifier) on this invoicer announcement.
Before moving the existing invoicer announcement into Procountor, the company should make sure that the electronic invoice contract which the company has with the bank regarding the address on the invoicer announcement, Accountor Finago is set as the intermediary service provider and that the WebService channel is Procountor's channel (can be found from the Bank authentication document). If the intermediary of the payment is something different in the bank, a new Bank authentication document can be filled and sent to bank.
Also the company should make sure that the information on the possible existing receiver info notifications is correct before importing them into Procountor with a CSV file. An existing receiver info notification means that the consumer has made an electronic invoicing or direct payment contract with the existing invoicer announcement at some point in the bank; they have already verified their willingness to receive this material. Instead of the consumers having to make a new contract the information about these old, existing receiver info notifications can be moved to Procountor. More information about transferring the existing receiver info notifications can be found later in this article.
Moving the electronic invoices for consumers to Procountor
1. Go to Management > Company info > E-invoice and scanning provider addresses and fill in the electronic invoice address and electronic invoice operator that are on the existing invoicer announcement. The electronic invoice address must be entered in the exact form that it is on the invoicer announcement and the contract with the bank. Generally electronic invoice addresses can be in IBAN or OVT form, also with TE prefix. More detailed information can be found here.
2. Activate the row that was filled and select Invoicer announcement >Add existing.
3. Fill in the following view:
Services provided by the seller field has two options to choose between: Electronic invoices for consumers or Electronic invoices for consumers and direct payment depending on what has been agreed with the bank.
Identification information field has options Bank reference code, Customer No. and their combination, Customer No. and bank reference code.
- Consumer fills in the identification information when he/she makes the agreements of receiving e-invoices in the web bank. The information should be clear so that the customer can find the information from the first invoice for example.
- If both customer number and bank reference code are used as identification information, both of them are obligatory when the customer is creating an E-invoice agreement. The customer number must be between 1 and 35 characters and it should not include other special characters than hyphens or spaces. When a reference number is used, there has to be a sales invoice for the customer that is found in Procountor.
Payment instruction ID field should be filled with he same payment instruction ID as in the old software. The ID can be numbers, letters or characters.
- The ID can be checked from the old software or from the software producer.
Select accounts section is used to select the bank accounts that the announcement applies to. At least one bank account has to be chosen. Menu on the left side shows all available accounts (bank connections). Choose one account or more and use the arrow button to move them to the announcement. Correspondingly, accounts can be removed from the announcement by choosing the account to be removed and clicking the lower arrow button.
4. Click Save when you are done.
Transferring the existing receiver info notifications to Procountor
Those receiver info notifications that were in the old software can be transferred to Procountor by using a CSV file (the information separators should be semicolons which is Excel's default setting).
- Before the transfer the customers should be created to Procountor's customer register. It is recommended the all the customers should have customer numbers so that the receiver info notifications can be allocated to the right customer in the register.
- The example CSV can be downloaded here.
1. Move to the old software and fetch the existing receiver info notifications. Form the CSV file as the following so that the file can be downloaded to Procountor.
- Do not add the Name column to the file.
|
Column |
Name |
Format |
Description |
Required |
|
A |
Status |
A, D |
A: Add (consumer wants to get e-invoices from the company) D: Delete (consumer does not want to get the e-invoices from the company in the future) |
Yes |
|
B |
Date |
dd.mm.yyyy or dd.m.yyyy or dd.mm.yyyy HH.mm.ss
|
You can give date or datetime. |
|
|
C |
Type (notification) |
00, 01 |
00: Consumer e-invoice, 01: Direct debit |
Yes |
|
D |
Identification number (register) |
String |
Value given in Customer register or reference number |
|
|
E |
Name (Register) |
String |
Consumer name |
Yes |
|
F |
Operator code |
BIC code |
Consumer's BIC code |
Yes |
|
G |
E Invoice address |
IBAN number |
IBAN number always starts with ‘FI’. There should not be any spaces between the digits. |
Yes |
|
H |
Payment Instruction Id |
String |
The same as in the invoice announcement Payment instruction ID |
Yes |
Important: In column G, the E Invoice address IBAN number is often the same as the customer's bank account number. But the E Invoice address sometimes is not the same as the customer's bank account, and therefore it is important to verify the correct address from the old software or bank.
2. Download the CSV file to Procountor Registers > Customer register > Receiver info notifications > Import receiver info notifications.
3. The downloaded file can be seen before the initial import. If there are somethings wrong with the file, Procountor will show the cell in red.
- Erroneous rows cannot be corrected in this view and they will not be imported.
- Correct the CSV file if necessary.
4. Check the imported information and import the file to Procountor.
Procountor will allocate the imported information to the customer in customer register based on the customer number or reference number of already made sales invoices. If there are no sales invoices made for the customer in Procountor the customer umber should be used in the identification number field in CSV.
5. Handle the receiver information by checking Name (register) field and Name (notification) field.
6. Activate one notification and click Allocate to business partner.
7. If necessary choose the right business partner from the drop down menu and click Continue.
- Handling receiver info notifications automatically sets electronic invoice as the invoice channel and the address in the notification as the e-invoice address in the customer register.
8. After this the e-invoices can be sent to consumers.
New receiver info notifications will be handled as following in the future.