Bank statements - manual input and/or import with reconciling invoices

[jverlaan]

Hi,

I'm searching a way to insert my bankstatements that lists all my banktransactions (debit and credit) done for the previous period.
Transactions include payed and received invoices, bank costst, salary payments, etc.
While inserting the payments I must be able to reconcile the invoices. Is there any functionality available to do this? I have searched but can't find it.

This is must have for many Europian countries to start financials with xtuple's ERP.

[jrogelstad]

It sounds like you simply want to import bank statements to help automate bank reconciliation. I don't see this as a request that pertains particularly to European requirements. This would be beneficial to users everywhere.

That said, we don't have support for bank statement import now. If you're not averse to getting your hands dirty that would be great functionality to see added in and we'd welcome a code contribution. If you're less averse to paying someone else to do the work, you could sponsor us to write that functionality in as well.

[jverlaan]

Thanks for your quick responce.
At least in The Netherlands (but also in many other EU-countries) we don't work with checks. Everything is handled directly via banktransactions and per defined period we get/download a bank statement with the results that must be inserted (manually typed or via import) into the ERP-system linked to the bank-account.

As I'm in the investigation fase for a client to implement a ERP system in a ETO manufacturing environment I tested the manufacturing part and think we can proceed, but now I'm running in this bank statement issue that is possible blocking going further.
I have read some development topics that describe somewhat the same requerements. As Daniele mentioned in a email that Europe is high on the expansion list, I guess that this issue will block growth where Financials is involved (and isn't that a key-part for every ERP implementation to have that integrated?)

How do other EU xtuple-clients for e.g. in German handle this? Do you know this? Is there a workarround available so at least we can start with building a Proof of Concept for our client?

Thanks in advance for your answer.

[jrogelstad]

We hear this frequently that "Europeans don't have checks," but you still have to inform the bank to perform a transaction. We have had support for electronic checks for 2 or 3 years now:

http://www.xtuple.org/ElectronicChecks (original specification)
http://www.xtuple.com/demo/videos

There is a plugin-point that was added to support custom output logic for local banking formats that was a result of this thread:
http://www.xtuple.org/node/1981

This is how users handle electronic communications to banks at least on the outbound side. On the inbound side it is pretty much a manual cash receipt process, though we have done at least one automated import implementation for a client that uses BACS in the UK. The result of that effort was some new API views for importing cash receipts that could be the basis of import implementation. Unfortunately the "turn key" solution in that case was so specific to the customer we haven't found a we to add it to the application for general use.

So there are several pieces in place. If you need more functionality or a more complete and automated solution it probably makes sense to contact our sales team and discuss adding that in. I think your prospect will find it challenging to find any completely free solution that meets all their needs, but if we are already pretty close and the main cost they incur is adding some new functionality to round out the application, then I think on balance it would be a win for them.