Setting up direct debit

  • 22/12/2025
  • 5 minutes to read

Continia Banking enhances the standard direct debit functionality in Business Central by enabling users to view and manage customer direct debit suggestions. This allows you to track collections transferred from the customer’s bank account to yours.

Note

Direct debit availability can vary by bank. In the banks overview page, a blank entry in the Direct Debit column means direct debit isn’t supported, Manual indicates it’s available via manual file upload, and Direct means both manual upload and direct processing are supported.

To configure direct debit

Before you can process direct debits, you must enable and configure the relevant settings.

To configure direct debit:

  1. Search (Search) for and select Banking Export Setup.
  2. On the Direct Debit FastTab, from the Default Template Name and Default Batch Name fields, select the templates you want to use for direct debit. These fields specify the default template and batch names for payment suggestions when processing direct debits. Once enabled, the system will prefill related fields during payment processing.

To set up direct debit on the customer card

  1. On the Customer Card, click Related > Customer > Other > Direct Debit Mandates and enter the information relevant for the customer.
  2. On the Payments FastTab, ensure that the selected Payment Method Code supports Direct Debit, and specify the Balance Account to be used for Direct Debit transactions.

To view mandate usage history

You can track how and where a SEPA mandate has been used. This includes identifying if a mandate was voided and reviewing all related transactions for auditing or troubleshooting purposes.

To view mandate usage:

  • Search (Search) for and select Direct Debit Mandate Usages. You can now review the list of the different payment registers. For example, you could see that a direct debit mandate was used but subsequently voided. This helps identify discrepancies, such as why a mandate appears to have been used only five times instead of six.

To process direct debit payment suggestions

Continia Banking provides an enhanced journal for processing direct debit payments. You can automate this with templates that generate daily suggestions and optionally integrate with an approval workflow.

To create direct debit payment suggestions:

  1. Search (Search) for and select Payment Suggestions.
  2. On the action bar, click Suggest Customer Direct Debits. Follow the same steps as described in the Suggesting and Processing Payment article. The journal information is prefilled by the settings from the Banking Export Setup.
  3. On the Payment Suggestion Card page, verify fields such as SEPA Mandate ID, SEPA Mandate Sequence Type, and SEPA Mandate Date of Signature. Pay special attention to the two fields listed below, as they override existing setup:
    • Use Bank Account – specifies the bank account to be used, ignoring any previously defined setup.
    • Use Payment Method – specifies the payment method to be used for all suggested lines. Any payment method defined on the customer entries is ignored.
  4. On the action bar, click Create Journal Lines. You can access the direct debit journal directly from this page. Alternatively, you can navigate to the direct debit journal from the payment suggestion page. You can now proceed like you would in any other journal.

You can also create a payment suggestion template or set up an approval workflow to automate this further.

To handle direct debit reversals, refer to Introducing direct debit returns