SEPA-Transfer in the daily business

We at JAM Software are constantly growing and so does our hunger. But investing in a conventional cafeteria that serves lunch every day simply wouldn’t be economical– neither do we have enough space. Nevertheless, to offer our JAMers daily lunch, we introduced the JAM Cafeteria a while ago.

A warm meal every day despite a small kitchen: Our JAM Cafeteria at work

Free coffee, drinks and fresh fruits: That’s JAM Software. But it’s also important for us to offer our employees warm lunch every day. Therefore, we use the corporate catering service of the Hofmann Menue-Lounge. We can choose from various meals and get it delivered deep-frozen.

Every JAMer who likes to participate in the JAM Cafeteria can order his or her lunch in the morning using the Menue-Lounge web application. At noon, we take a look inside the ordering lists and go get the meals from the freezer. Next, they jump into the oven and viola – delicious lunch for everyone! Sounds pretty good. But isn’t the payment process too time-consuming? We have a homemade solution.

Use Case: Automated SEPA direct debits with SEPA-Transfer

During the pilot stage of our canteen process, we wrote every single bill manually. But it was clear: This was way too elaborate for recurring payments. We wanted to automate the process. That’s where our own solution SEPA-Transfer came in!

SEPA-Transfer is our solution for processing large volumes of transactions in the European SEPA payment area – no matter if B2B or private direct debits and transfers. Our tool allows fast data import of common data formats, fast processing and direct forwarding of payments to the bank. Alternatively, the software offers several data export options.

So, where does SEPA-Transfer come into our use case? First, we need a signed SEPA mandate of the employee who likes to participate – after importing the employee’s name and IBAN, these forms can easily be printed right from SEPA-Transfer. Furthermore, to be allocated, every employee needs a mandate reference that can be generated using our tool. The assignment of a payment to an employee is done conveniently via the mandate reference. Now everything is set up and ready for automation!

Importing data, generating direct debits, sending it online to the bank – just takes a minute!

After one month, we download an Excel file from the Menue-Lounge platform containing all payment data including the employee’s mandate reference. SEPA-Transfers supports all common file types for structured data – allowing the import of Excel, CSV and even SEPA XML with an ease. Our Import Wizard helps out:

Taking this example into account, we use an Excel file that contains the amount to be paid besides the employee’s name and reference number. Our data preview provides a quick overview over imported data.

A few clicks later, SEPA-Transfer begins to generate direct debits form the imported data. Doing so, our tool memorizes the assignment of the columns to the fields of the debit note for the next import.

Finally, the last quick and easy step is to transfer the direct debits to the bank ensuring HBCI/FinTS standards. By the way: SEPA-Transfer supports all common authentication and TAN procedures.

Here is a trick for your IT management: With our clever command line parameters, the process can be automated to accelerate recurring payment tasks.

See our tutorial on how to enhance your procedure with command line parameters.

So, let's summarize again: First, we import the canteen bills, which we receive as a download, to SEPA-Transfer and assign the amounts to be paid to our employees based on the mandate reference. Then we automatically create SEPA direct debits and send them directly to the bank. After automating the payment process of the JAM Cafeteria, it only takes us a minute per month to complete the task – can you beat that?

Do you want to automate your recurring bank transfers, too? Or do you need to convert your payment data from Excel to, for example, SEPA XML? SEPA-Transfer comes with a rich portfolio of clever features helping you to automate payment processes. Check them out.