As you may have already received information from your bank, the conditions for foreign payments via file is changing. This with the introduction of the SEPA (Single Euro Payment Area, which is a single payment area in Europe with the euro currency). SEPA therefore covers all EU and EEA countries as well as Switzerland and Monaco.

The benefit of SEPA is that there will be uniform payment method for all countries. This includes both SEPA payments (SEPA Credit Transfer) and direct debit services with names SEPA Direct Debit. SEPA is also a format that offers increased opportunities for payment references etc. This is also a problem when different banks and different payees may set different requirements for payment reference.

SEPA becomes mandatory for euro payments in all EU and EEA countries from 31 October this year (in countries with the euro as the local currency, this has been mandatory since 2014). This means that as of this date, all payment files containing euros businesses, municipalities and other organizations to be in the format of ISO20022.

Does your ERP system support SEPA?
In later versions of Dynamics NAV is support for SEPA built. The standard has not been completed, but adjusted over time so you need to ensure that the latest version of the file format is implemented. Since the format SEPA also gives room for different information and different ways to use it, it is important to check that the banking services that you plan to use is supported by the ERP system.

What do you do?
It is important to come prepared to ensure the company's payment methods, if you can continue to make payments in euros, the elderly pay services will be shut down by banks and replaced with the new formats. This includes both outgoing payments and incoming payments if they are made in euro.
A good idea can be to prepare this work make an inventory and analysis of current and future payment methods. This is especially important if your company has several banks or planning to change banks.

If you have not already investigated this and have developed solutions for the company's cash flows, we at Effekt can help you with this. Please contact me if you would like to schedule a time when we can come to you to go through this.