QR-Bill Management in Business Central
From July 1st 2020, companies in Switzerland must be able to receive QR-bills. QR-bills are payment slips that follow invoices, and are a country-wide initiative to streamline payment processes. QR-bills replace all existing payment slips and ESR-related functionality. They contain all of the information needed to make payments, and a QR code on the payment slip makes it easy to import the information into Business Central. All relevant information is imported and used to generate payments for the vendor who sent the QR-bill, including the payment reference, which automatically gets included in Vendor Ledger Entries and exported in payment files to the bank.
Get started with the QR-Bill Management Extension
The QR-Bill Management extension is included and automatically installed in Business Central. To get started with the extension, you must make a few configuration changes in Business Central. An easy way to that is to use the Set Up QR-Bill assisted setup guide. The guide will help you enter information, such as:
- Specify whether to use your IBAN or QR-IBAN.
- Define how to display names and address on QR-bills, and to use the German Umlaut Chars Encoding. We recommend that you use the default values.
- Select the default layout to use for QR-bills. The layout determines whether to use IBAN or QR-IBAN, whether the reference type is creditor or QR reference, and whether to include billing information in the SWICO format.
- Enable sales and service invoice types, and payment methods, for the QR-bills.
- Specify the journal template and journal batch to use when generating purchase journals from scanned or imported QR-bills.
If needed, you can change these settings on the following pages:
- QR-Bill Setup to change general settings.
- QR-Bill Layout to change layout settings.
Issuing QR-Bills
You can enable QR-bills for sales and service invoices. This adds an entry to Report Selection - Sales that generates an extra PDF with the QR-bill when invoices are generated.
Adding Billing Information to QR-Bills
When you create a QR-bill you can include billing information in the SWICO format, as advocated by SIX, the Swiss payment infrastructure provider. Ideally, business applications that produce or import QR-bills should also be able to process information such as the VAT amount, the vendor's invoice number, and so on, because it can be valuable for the payable invoice. In Business Central, we import this information but use only the vendor's invoice number. If you want to use the other information you can create your own customization.
Understanding the Payment Reference
Payment processes are are all about paying the right amount to the right party, and making it easy for them to reconcile payments to close outstanding accounts. The QR-Bill Management extension handles this by generating a payment reference for QR-bills that are unique for invoices issued in a specific company, which means the same payment reference cannot be issued more than one time. If your customer is also using Business Central, the payment reference is imported when receiving QR-bills, transferred to the Vendor Ledger Entries page, and used as a reference when creating vendor payments. For more information, see Receiving QR-Bills. The flow is similar to the previous ESR Reference functionality that the QR-bills are replacing. Eventually, payment files (pain.001) will be sent from the customer's business app to their bank with the message to transfer the amounts to the vendor's account. The bank will produce a customer statement file (camt.054) that the vendor can import to reconcile accounts. This file will include the payment reference and is imported through the Data Exchange Framework that is updated by the QR-Bill Management extension to import camt.054 files.
For ESR references you could configure information, for example, so that they contain the customer number and invoice number. You cannot configure the payment reference in QR-bills. There will always be a 1:1 relation between an issued QR-bill and a payment, which makes reconciliation easy and eliminates the need to configure the payment reference on QR-bills. Instead, Business Central uses a unique counter for the payment reference. Additionally, logic is in place to block import or scan of the same payment reference twice.
Scanning and Importing QR-Bills
To scan or import a QR-bill, you must use one of the following types of scanning devices:
- An input scanner that decodes the QR code and simulates the keyboard to paste the decoded value directly in a field in Business Central.
- A scanner that can decode the QR code and save it to a .txt file that you import to Business Central.
Note
You cannot import QR-bills received as PDF files directly into Business Central because Business Central cannot interpret QR-codes. You must use one of the scanning methods.
Receiving QR-Bills
You can receive QR-bills in several places in Business Central:
- Incoming Documents, when you want a QR-bill to initiate the creation of a new purchase document or purchase journal.
- Purchase Orders and Purchase Invoices, when you want to import information from a QR-bill to an existing purchase document and use it to validate the amount and currency and to store the payment reference.
- Purchase Journals, when you want to create new purchase journal lines based on QR-bills.
To receive a QR-bill through an incoming documents
Receiving a QR-bill through incoming documents is especially useful when the process is automated, but you can also manually receive a QR-bill through incoming documents.
- Choose the
icon, enter Incoming Documents, and then choose the related link. - In the Incoming Documents list, create a new entry by choosing New, and then New.
- On the Incoming Document page, enter a description in the Description field.
- To import the QR-bill, choose Actions, then QR-Bill, and then Scan QR-Bill to scan a QR-bill into the incoming document entry.
Tip
After you import the QR-bill, you can check for errors on the Matching Details FastTab.
From the incoming document you can create a purchase journal or a purchase invoice, and the payment reference from the QR-bill will be assigned to both.
Note
When you import QR-bills, Business Central will try to find a vendor bank account that has a matching IBAN or QR-IBAN. When importing QR-bills on incoming documents, and thereby creating a document or purchase journal, the vendor bank account will determine the vendor to use. The incoming document approach helps ensure that the correct vendor is assigned.
Receiving a QR-Bill through Purchase Order or Purchase Invoice
Receiving a QR-bill through a purchase order or purchase invoice validates the invoice amount and adds the payment reference to the ledgers. Like incoming documents, you can scan or import a QR-bill to an existing purchase order or invoice. This process uses the QR-IBAN or IBAN from the QR-bill to find the vendor with a matching number. If no match is found you cannot scan or import the QR-bill. If that happens, you can create the vendor bank account and then allow the QR-bill to be attached to the purchase document. When the QR-bill is scanned or imported to the purchase document it will add the amount, payment reference, and other information from the QR-bill. This is used for validation before posting the purchase document. Posting will be blocked if the amount of the order or invoice does not match the amount from the QR-bill. Validation also happens when you scan or import the QR-bill. If the payment reference is already used on a vendor ledger entry for a vendor, an error will display. Vendors cannot issue multiple QR-bills with the same payment reference. Similarly, an error will display if the QR-bill and payment reference has already been imported to an open purchase document.
Receiving a QR-Bill through a Purchase Journal
You can scan or import QR-bills directly into a Purchase Journal. This is useful when you want to create new journal lines based on a QR-bill. Scanning or importing directly into a purchase journal creates a new Purchase Journal Line using the vendor and amount from the QR-bill, and tries to identify the vendor by finding a Vendor Bank Account that has a matching IBAN or QR-IBAN. For example, using purchase journals is useful if you do not want to use purchase orders or invoices.
Reconciliation
When importing bank transactions (camt) on the Payment Reconciliation Journal page, the file is assumed to include the payment reference, which will automatically find the corresponding Customer Ledger Entries to settle.
Upcoming Capabilities for QR-Bills
We are planning to add capabilities to the QR-Bill Management extension in the coming updates to 2020 release wave 1. For example, you will be able to receive QR-bills through purchase documents and purchase journals. This will provide additional validations and allow you to automate and streamline receipt processes. For information about when that will happen, keep an eye on our Release Plan.