In a digital world, many media companies may not immediately think they need to send payment slips. However, there are a few good reasons to have the option anyway: If you have (or want to have) Danish businesses or public institutions as customers, you will often be met with the requirement for an invoice that can be paid by their accounting department. The person in the organization who wants to read a magazine, for example, is not necessarily the same person responsible for paying for it.
Fortunately, it’s inexpensive to get started with payment slips, and Iteras can send them automatically for you (and import the payments). Once the bank and Betalingsservice are set up, it usually runs smoothly.
Step 1/2
To be able to send payment slips, you first need to obtain an FI number. This is created by your bank, usually for a small fee. The FI number must point to the subscription account, be of type +71, and be configured to be notified via Betalingsservice. The last part is important to emphasize, as banks often make mistakes in the setup (surprisingly many bank employees don’t know how to configure this).
If you also have FI numbers for other purposes—such as ad payments—it’s important to tell the bank that only the FI number used for ITERAS should be notified via Betalingsservice.
If you already have an FI number that you use for subscribers/members, we strongly recommend continuing to use that number as the subscription/membership FI number. In practice, this means that if you’ve used your current FI number for subscribers/members and other invoicing (e.g., ads), you should create a new FI number for the other invoicing and keep the existing one for Iteras invoicing.
The reason is that many subscribers do not notice when an FI number is changed—no matter how clearly it is communicated. Online banking systems remember FI numbers, so you’ll inevitably have a period where not all payments are registered correctly if you switch FI number. It’s usually easier to inform a smaller group of other debtors about the change than to notify a large number of subscribers/members.
Step 2/2
Once the FI number is in place, you need to set up a Betalingsservice creditor agreement. This is not necessary to receive payments via payment slips, but it is necessary for Iteras to automatically register the payments. The agreement is free to create, and you can do it here: betalingsservice.dk.
BS requires a number of details during the setup process. Here’s what you need from us:
Integration with accounting system: Yes (this is for Iteras)
Product: Betalingsservice with payment slips
Betalingsservice Archive: Not necessary for Iteras
Debtor group number: Optional (“00001” is fine)
Text on payment overview: Your company, association, magazine, or product name (in other words: you choose)
How should the customer number appear: Enter “Subscriber no.” or “Membership no.”
Payments on non-banking days: Next banking day
Company uses external data provider. Data provider ID number: 35681558
Subsystem: BS1
Services: Automatic payments, paper payment slips, electronic payment slips to banks
In the comments box, write the following:
"Hi Betalingsservice
We would like to enable the following services on our agreement:
603 deliveries should be activated: We want both daily sign-ups and cancellations (0231, 0232, 0233, 0234) and the monthly delivery (0230)
We want automatic payments to be advised on the payment day
We want electronic notifications of rejections/chargebacks on automatic payments on an ongoing basis
We want to import 605 files submitted by our data provider.
Thank you in advance."
If you are switching to Iteras from another provider and already have a BS creditor agreement, the agreement must be updated. At a minimum, the data provider number must be changed to Iteras’, and if you have a basic agreement, it must be upgraded to a full agreement so you also have the right to send paper payment slips.
Read more about updating existing BS agreements.(article is in danish)