EBICS Integration
EBICS (Electronic Banking Internet Communication Standard) allows companies to manage payments across multiple banks using a single, secure system. Widely used in Europe, EBICS is an open standard compatible with many ERP systems, making it easy for businesses to handle multi-bank payments and cash management.
Please contact your bank and ask for an EBICS access.
The access should have signature class T, meaning that you can only transfer documents but not sign them. This way, your ERPNext instance will be able to fetch your bank transactions, but cannot initiate any payments.
The following order types are required:
| Type | Description | Remark |
|---|---|---|
| camt.053 | Bank statements for completed days | |
| camt.052 | Intraday bank transactions | optional |
| camt.054 | Details for itemising bulk transfers | optional |
Your bank may ask you to sign an agreement for the EBICS access. Your bank may charge a one-time fee as well as a monthly fee for this service. In our experience, the one-time fee is around 20,00 € and the monthly fee is around 8,00 €.
Once the agreement is signed, your bank will send a letter with the EBICS parameters to your address. This letter will contain the following information:
- Host ID / Hostname
- EBICS URL / URL für EBICS-Zugang
- Partner ID / Host Kunden-ID
- User ID
- Cipher key / Chiffrierschlüssel
- Authentication key / Authentifikationsschlüssel
Please make sure you have this information at hand before proceeding.
Please go to Banking Settings and enter the following information:
- Admin URL: https://banking.alyf.de
- Enabled: Activate this checkbox
- Enable EBICS: Activate this checkbox
Please fill in the following information we have sent you by email. If you didn't sign up yet, you can do so at banking.alyf.de.
- Customer ID
- Portal API Token
The Customer ID and Portal API Token are used to identify your subscription and enables your ERPNext instance to communicate with our servers.
The fields Fintech Licensee Name and Fintech License Key are automatically fetched from our backend server. These are used for unlocking the ebics library, which is a proprietary third party software that we are licensing for you.
Note
Neither we nor the developers of the ebics library will have access to your EBICS keys or your bank account data. All sensitive data is transferred directly between your ERPNext instance and your bank and stored only on your ERPNext instance.
If you don't have one already, please create a new Bank in ERPNext and enter the following information:
- Bank Name: The name of your bank (doesn't have to be precise, use something easily recognizable)
- EBICS Host ID: The Host ID from the bank's letter
- EBICS URL: The EBICS URL from the bank's letter
If you already have a suitable Bank record, just edit it and fill in the EBICS information.
If you don't have one already, please create a new Bank Account in ERPNext and enter the following information:
- Account Name: The name of the bank account (doesn't have to be precise, use something easily recognizable)
- Is Company Account: Activate this checkbox
- Company: Select the company that owns the bank account
- Company Account: Select accounting account that represents the bank account
- Bank: Select the Bank you created in the previous step
- IBAN: The IBAN of the bank account, without spaces. This is important for the EBICS communication, as it's used to identify the account from the data received from the bank.
If you already have a suitable Bank Account record, just make sure it matches the above requirements.
Please create a new EBICS User in ERPNext and enter the following information:
- Full Name: The name of the person in whose name the EBICS access was granted
- Company: The company that owns the bank account
- Bank Account: The bank account you created above
- Bank: The bank you created above
- Partner ID: The Partner ID from the bank's letter
- User ID: The User ID from the bank's letter
- Needs Certificate: This is untested and should usually be left unchecked. If you are based in France, you may need to activate this option.
Please save the EBICS User record and click the "Initialize" button. You will be prompted to enter a Passphrase and a Signature Passphrase. The Passphrase is required to decrypt your keyring for any communication with the bank. The Signature Passphrase is only required when uploading data to your bank. You can optionally store the Passphrase in ERPNext to enabled automated regular downloads of your bank statements. If you do not want to store your password, you'll be prompted every time it is required. After setting you passwords, please click on "Initialize". This will create your keys for the EBICS communication and transmit them to your bank.
Note
We will receive and store your Host ID, Partner ID, and User ID. We use this information to buy a license for the ebics library on your behalf. Once you delete the EBICS User record, we will at the same time revoke the license and delete the information from our servers.
After clicking the "Initialize" button, you will find an "EBICS initialization letter" attached in the sidebar. Please sign this letter and send it to your bank (email or fax might be accepted). Your bank will use this letter to verify the keys that were transmitted electronically. Once the bank has verified the keys, you can proceed with the next steps.
After the bank has verified the keys, it's your turn to verify the bank's keys. In the first letter you've received from your bank, you will find a fingerprint of the bank's keys. Please click on "Verify Bank Keys" in the EBICS User record. Your ERPNext instance will fetch the bank's keys and show them to you. Please compare the fingerprint with the one you received from the bank. If they match, click "Yes" to confirm the bank's keys. If they don't match, please click "No" and contact your bank.
If everything went well, you should see that the checkboxes Initialized and Bank Keys Activated are both enabled. This means you are now ready to download your bank statements.
Before syncing your bank transactions, consider setting up "Automatic Party Matching" to improve the bank reconciliation experience. Please go through the link to determine if this feature benefits your organization.
To manually fetch transactions, please open the EBICS User record and click on "Download Bank Statements". You'll see a popup where you can select the date range for the transactions you want to download. Please click "Submit" to start the download.
After a while (not more than a few minutes), you should see new entries in your Bank Transaction list.
If you are switching from our previous banking provider (Klarna Kosma) to EBICS, please take special care to ensure that the dates don't overlap. Both services use different transaction IDs. If you re-download date ranges via EBICS that have already been downloaded via Kosma, we cannot avoid duplicates.
Once your EBICS setup is complete, please set the Start Date in your EBICS User and disable "Klarna Kosma" in the Banking Settings.
For example, let's assume the last sync via Klarna Kosma was for yesterday's transactions. Today, I verify my bank's keys and set the Start Date to the current date. At the same time, I disable "Klarna Kosma" in the Banking Settings. Tomorrow, I can download today's bank statements via EBICS.
Possible error message: EBICS_NO_DOWNLOAD_DATA_AVAILABLE
This means that your bank has not made any account statements available, for the requested period. This can happen when:
- Your bank does not yet supply account statements in camt.053 format. Please ask them to enable these statements for your account.
- You're trying to download transactions for the current day, but the account statements are only made available for completed days. Try downloading bank statements for past dates.