EBICS banking protocol
Exchange files directly with your banks from Odoo, with no portal and nobody logging in.
EBICS, the Electronic Banking Internet Communication Standard, is the channel European banks open to companies that want their software to talk to the bank. Bank statements are downloaded on a schedule and payment files are uploaded from Odoo, authenticated by your own cryptographic keys instead of a login page.
This module implements that protocol in Odoo. It has been developed and maintained by Noviat since 2015, on every major version of Odoo from 8.0 onwards.
If you are still working out whether EBICS is the right channel for you, we explain it without the jargon, with screen recordings of the flow in Odoo, on noviat.com/ebics.
What you get
- Statements that arrive on their own. A scheduled task collects the files your bank publishes, for every account, and processes them into bank statements.
- Payments that leave the same way. A payment batch or a payment order is uploaded to the bank in the format the bank expects, without exporting a file and re-uploading it somewhere else.
- A test mode. Uploads can be validated against the bank before anything counts as a real payment.
- Distributed signature (EDS). More than one person can be required to approve a payment, from an external signing application. Odoo holds no signing credentials.
- A trace of every exchange. Each download and each upload is a record, with the file it carried, the moment it happened and the user behind it.
Both EBICS 2.5 and EBICS 3.0 are supported.
Which banks
Any bank that publishes an EBICS access point can be connected. The standard is owned by EBICS SC, a company held by the German, French, Swiss and Austrian banking bodies (DK, CFONB, SIX and PSA), and it is the ordinary corporate channel in those countries.
To check a specific bank before you start, joonis publishes a public directory at joonis.de/en/fintech/banks. Enter a BIC and it returns the SEPA services the bank offers, the EBICS versions it supports and its Host-ID. Use the BIC rather than the IBAN: IBAN lookup is only evaluated for Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
What it costs
This module is free software, published under LGPL-3. There is no licence fee, no subscription and no per-connection charge from Noviat.
It does however rely on the fintech library from joonis, and that library requires a commercial licence for production use: as soon as you upload SEPA files with more than five transactions, retrieve statements older than the last three days, or use the distributed signature. The licence is contracted directly with joonis, not with Noviat.
At the time of writing, joonis charges a one-off setup fee plus a monthly fee per EBICS user id. Current pricing is published on joonis.de.
We prefer to state this up front rather than have you discover it during the project.
Requirements
The module depends upon
Because the connection needs a Python library and your key files on the server, it runs on Odoo.sh or on an on-premise installation.
Remark:
The EBICS 'Test Mode' for uploading orders requires fintech 4.3.4 or higher for EBICS 2.x and fintech 7.2.7 or higher for EBICS 3.0.
SWIFT 3SKey support requires fintech 6.4 or higher.
Fintech license
If you have a valid fintech.ebics license, you should add the following licensing parameters to the [options] section of the odoo server configuration file:
- fintech_register_name
The name of the licensee.
- fintech_register_keycode
The keycode of the licensed version.
; fintech fintech_register_name = MyCompany fintech_register_keycode = AB1CD-E2FG-3H-IJ4K-5L
Companion modules
account_ebics_oe
Required if you are running Odoo Enterprise
account_ebics_batch
This module adds a cron job for the automated import of EBICS files.
account_ebics_batch_payment
Recommended if you are using the Odoo Enterprise account_batch_payment module
account_ebics_payment_order
Required if you are using the OCA account_payment_order module.
account_usability
Recommended if you have multiple financial journals. This module adds a number of accounting menu entries such as bank statement list view which allows to see all statements downloaded via the ir.cron automated EBICS download.
account_ebics_oca_statement_import
Required if you are using the OCA Bank Statement import modules.
account_statement_import_fr_cfonb
Required to handle french CFONB files.
account_statement_import_camt
Required to handle camt.052 and camt.054 files.
Configuration
Go to Settings > Users
Add the users that are authorised to maintain the EBICS configuration to the 'EBICS Manager' Group.
Go to Accounting > Configuration > Miscellaneous > EBICS > EBICS File Formats
Check if the EBICS File formats that you want to process in Odoo are defined.
Most commonly used formats for which support is available in Odoo should be there already.
Please open an issue on https://github.com/Noviat/account_ebics to report missing EBICS File Formats.
For File Formats of type 'Downloads' you can also specify a 'Download Process Method'.
This is the method that will be executed when hitting the 'Process' button on the downloaded file.
The following methods are currently available:
- cfonb120
- camt.053
- camt.052
- camt.054
All these methods require complimentary modules to be installed (cf. Companion modules supra).
You'll get an error message when the required module is not installed on your Odoo instance.
Go to Accounting > Configuration > Miscellaneous > EBICS > EBICS Configuration
Configure your EBICS configuration according to the contract with your bank.
Usage
Go to Accounting > Bank and Cash > EBICS Processing
Downloaded files are listed there and can be processed into bank statements. Uploads are launched from the payment batch or payment order, and the file, its format and the order type are taken from the EBICS configuration rather than chosen by the user.
Getting your bank online
The technical configuration in Odoo takes hours. What sets the pace of a project is the bank: your keys are registered with the INI and HIA order types, both of which produce initialisation letters that have to be printed, signed and sent to the bank. Once the bank has activated the access you retrieve its public keys with HPB and compare the hash values with the letter it sent you.
Count in weeks per bank rather than days, and start the paperwork early.
Diagnostics
Add the following to your Odoo config file in order to diagnose issues with the EBICS connection with your bank:
log_handler = fintech.ebics:DEBUG
EBICS Return Codes
During the processing of your EBICS upload/download, your bank may return an Error Code, e.g.
EBICS Functional Error: EBICS_NO_DOWNLOAD_DATA_AVAILABLE (code: 90005)
A detailed explanation of the codes can be found on http://www.ebics.org. You can also find this information in the doc folder of this module (file EBICS_Annex1_ReturnCodes).
Electronic Distributed Signature (EDS)
This is supported via external signing apps, e.g. BankingVEU:
- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=subsembly.bankingveu
- https://apps.apple.com/de/app/bankingveu/id1578694190
Roadmap
- The end user is currently not able to change his passphrases (only the users with 'EBICS Manager' rights can do so).
- Add support to import externally generated keys & certificates (currently only 3SKey signature certificate).
- Add support for SWIFT 3SKey signing javascript lib (SConnect, cf https://www2.swift.com/3skey/help/sconnect.html).
Issues and pull requests are welcome on https://github.com/Noviat/account_ebics.
Credits
This module is developed and maintained by Noviat, an Odoo partner in Belgium specialised in accounting and finance since 2009.
We implement it, we configure the connection with your banks and we support you through the first cycles. If you want help getting a bank online, tell us which banks you use on noviat.com/ebics and we will tell you what it takes.