How to create Sepa Direct Debit XML file: solution and code

How to create Sepa Direct Debit XML file: solution and code

Even though Books provides a payment integration for Stripe and Gocardless (in Europe) there are customers that want to use the Sepa services of their own bank. Mainly because Stripe and Gocardless are quite expensive. In that case they would need a Sepa xml file for the transactions that need to be debited from their clients.

The solution is that we create a custom module for Sepa Transactions in Zoho Books. Each time an invoice is created in Books we write a Sepa record to this custom module and whenever you like you can generate the xml file which will then be placed in Zoho Workdrive.

Note: since Zoho uses pagination the max for a batch is restricted at 200 records. In this coding example I have created an iteration of 5 (coding trick for for next) in order to process 1000 sepa records into 5 batch xml files. You can alter this to make one file out of it or add more iterations but keep in mind there is function execution limit as well.

Code is attached to this post.
  1. First you create a custom module for which under Buttons you create a button on the list overview and attach the code as in sepa_button.txt
  2. Then create 2 custom fields in the Contact module; Iban (text) and Sepa (checkbox)
  3. Then you would have to create a Workflow on the module Invoices and attach the function as in invoice_workflow.txt.
  4. Then you create a Workflow on Invoices and attach the function invoice_workflow_empty_iban.txt.
You will notice that field names and text might need to be translated to whatever you want to use. I am not going to do all the work for you :) I will howver monitor this post for any questions.

You will find in the code that I have used a service to get the BIC from an iban number. If you don't want to use a service you will have to add a field for that in the contact module as well.

Since live debugging is hard and Books does not support a function log like CRM you will see I have a Phase variable for several steps. I you add sendmail in the catch part, you can send the Phase contents with the email to make debugging easier. Little trick.

Good luck!

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