Organizations looking for a generic SEPA integration

[capo]

A group of organizations that are participating at the CiviCRM work group in Madrid, are trying to start a new project -or join an existing one- for developing a ready-to-use module that allows us to work with SEPA Direct Debits in CiviCRM, without additional developments needed (and maybe a few Spanish specific optional add-ons).

If you're working -or have worked- with Project 60, or a related project, please tell me, so we can talk about the best way to manage our project. Our first goal is to write a document with our specifications but, to do so, I need to understand the scope of the existing code.

It looks like Project 60 is already a mature module, so maybe we only need a few new minor changes (customization screens so we don't need to change things manually in the database, etc). Once we've documented our needs, we'll try to coordinate our efforts so we can finance together the new changes.

[Erik Hommel]

Hi Carlos,
as you might be aware we are just doing this in co-operation with Amnesty Flanders?
Erik

[endres.systopia]

Hi Carlos,

this is Björn, one of Project60's constituents, and the situation in the project is as follows: The joint development ran out of time when approaching the February 1st deadline this year, so unfortunately the development split up into three branches.
 - Xavier's branch: working stable AFAIK, but it's very specific to one customer, and therefore has many restrictions in other scenarios
 - SYSTOPIA's (our) branch: working stable with 3 organisations since February, and is being constantly improved with a new release coming up this month. It's also localized
 - SfE's branch: I honestly don't know a lot about their approach, but it seems to me that we are more advanced - especially in terms of stability and interface.

You can find Links and general information on the Project60 page (http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/Project+60).

Since having three concurrent branches is very unfortunate, Xavier and I will start to merge/integrate the first two branches next week.

Feel free to contact me for a chat about features, plans and options. I'd be happy to welcome another contributor to the project.

Cheers,
Björn

[ilja]

Hi Carlos,

I still needed to send you an update. As we discussed earlier indeed Amnesty Flanders is embarking on the same road. We did now start up concretely, as Erik informed.

The work now is done by Xavier Dutoit and Erik Hommel, in close cooperation with Georges, Myriam and myself at Amnesty's side.

Some more in detail on what we are doing now:

1. Cleaning Up: Merging the SEPA CiviCRM extensions created by several CiviCRM community members for different projects into 1 extension. That new extension would be as generic as possible and would consider workflows in charities collecting SEPA direct debits, whether face2face, telemarketing or online - and the date to be kept needed.

2. History: Enabling CiviCRM logging for SEPA direct debit information That is a function not available yet in the previous work. If this does not work, enable storing history of the SEPA transactions and changes in another way.

Apart from this more generic work their will be some Belgian specific work (specific Belgian bankfile formats), and some Amensty Flanders specific work concerning migration of the actual mandates towards the new system.

Concerning timing
• Cleaning up to be finished by the middle of July
• History and Migration to be completed the middle of August
• Basic testing with the bank to be done during the second half of August.

Resulting we hope to have this new SDD-module to be operational in September-October.

What is not yet provides in this stage, but foreseen as next steps later is:
• importing data from external parties, we will continue the current manual process for the time being. (example: csv by F2F-agencies or TM-agencies containing new mandate information)
• providing a web donation page or function, we will continue the current partially manual process for the time being
• setting up validation rules other than invalid SEPA transactions, although we will check that the basic engine to do validation is in place.
-> foreseen: basic validation of transactions (ex: is this a coorect IBAN number?)
-> for later: more complex validation based on a series of business rules (ex: this donor has already an ongoing SDD-madante, are you sure to start a second?)

Concerning the funding for this project. Amnesty International Flanders has provided the funding for this next step. Of course the result will be available for the community. We are looking to the community to continue the funding for the further development of the SDD-module after this first step.
Of course we also welcome community member to step in now already, and share the initial funding. Investment in that way saved for Amnesty International then would go into funding for the next steps.

Parallel to this we (well Erik) are doing some work on import of bankfiles, building on what is already available with civibanking.


All participation and feedback welcome. And ofcourse I'm available for more details.

Greetings,
Ilja

[ilja]

Since having three concurrent branches is very unfortunate, Xavier and I will start to merge/integrate the first two branches next week.

This is indeed what I was referring to in my post under the heading 'cleaning up'  in the same time of Bjorn ;-)

Great, Bjorn, that you join that work.

Ilja

[Erik Hommel]

Thanks for joining the conversation Ilja and Björn!

[xavier]

@capo

I've just tested (using ING validator) the xml file we generate in FR as Spain SEPA Direct Debit (AEB) and they are a few warning but it's valid, so shouldn't be too much of a problem to use project 60.

Anyway, you need to schedule time ahead, because even within the same country, each bank seems to be more or less picky and getting your org certified and the workflow working with the bank takes a (very) long while.

On Ilja list (eg. batch import mandates) are they things you'd need too?

To clarify on the validation: the IBAN is already validated and that works fine, what has been proven more complex is validating the BIC. We can validate the format (eg length, need to have a country code...) but to do it right, we'd need a list of BIC (one or several by bank) and we haven't yet found that.

Would be great if you could investigate how it works in spain and if you can get a list of all the valid bic there.

X+

X+

[capo]

Would be great if you could investigate how it works in spain and if you can get a list of all the valid bic there.

I've been taking a look at it and, in fact, it looks like it's easy to obtain the official list of BIC/Swift codes for Spain banks:

• In Spain, the entity that regulates how banks operate is Banco de España (http://www.bde.es).
• In their website, there is a section where you can find a list of entities: http://www.bde.es/bde/es/secciones/servicios/Particulares_y_e/Registros_de_Ent/
• In this section, you can download an Excel file containing the list of bank entities. This list includes a BIC column: http://www.bde.es/f/webbde/IFI/servicio/regis/ficheros/es/REGBANESP_CONESTAB_A.XLS

We are now migrating our online member webforms to CiviCRM, so we'll have to make a decision soon. My preference is to create webforms where users will have, by default, an "Spanish way" to introduce their bank account number. If their bank account is Spanish, they will introduce their bank account as they have always done it (before SEPA). Otherwise, I'll ask for the IBAN account and I assume I wont actually validate the BIC code, as long as I don't have the complete list.

I've attached a screenshot that shows how a bank entity (Triodos) has implemented a form similar to the one I'm talking about (you can choose either the national account format, or the IBAN one). The screenshot is in Spanish but I guess its easy to understand the idea.

[capo]

By the way, I've been reading the documentation and I still don't know how memberships work in CiviCRM when working with Direct Debits. I mean, how do we generate Direct Debit payments for active members?