Goal

You can connect Xentral to multiple payment providers. This allows you to import incoming and outgoing payments, and keep track of your invoices and accounts payables. There are detailed guides for PayPal, Shopify Payments, and Klarna.

Next to your payment providers, it is possible to connect Xentral to most bank accounts. This works in the same way.

Hint: If Xentral does not offer a standard connection for your provider, it is always possible to use at least a manual CSV import of this data, as long as the provider supports such an export.

Prerequisites

You must create each payment method you offer to your customers in Basic settings. The payment method contains the information on whether Xentral should or not set the payment status of each invoice using the transaction import. Refer to this guide to learn more.

Workflow

The connection works in three steps:

Provide Xentral with the needed credentials to set up the connection with your provider.
Define the detail settings for the import.
Test the connection by importing the first transactions.

Creating a new payment provider in Xentral

A corresponding interface represents each payment provider. Follow these steps to create such a connection:

Log into Xentral and go to Administration > Accounting > Business accounts.
Click +New to create a new interface.
Select your interface from the list of accounts. If it is a bank account, use HBCI/FinTS. Select Custom if your provider is not listed (for example, Klarna).
Follow the steps in the pop-up window.
The pop-up window validates the data you entered. Once you complete these steps, the connection is set up, and the Details page appears.

Hint: Using the pop-up window is a user-friendly way to check if Xentral supports your bank account. The pop-up requests your IBAN in the first step. If this IBAN is accepted, Xentral can connect to your bank account.

Defining the detail settings for the import

The Details page for each account will determine how Xentral should treat the imported transactions and when to import them.

Go to Administration > Accounting > Business Accounts > *Choose the account*

The Details page has the following areas:

Settings

Description: This is the name of your account.
Type: Choose the needed interface. Note that you can only import CSV data if you selected the Bank via CSV import type. You can’t import CSV data using an account with another type.
Project (optional): Select a project if you want to prohibit the access of your account to specific employees.
Active: Activates the interface. If you don’t need the interface anymore, you can deactivate it.
No email: Xentral can send a payment confirmation to your customers when a transaction is received. Select this check box if you don’t want Xentral to do this.
Allow changes: You can change the bookings for this account after the booking happens. Clear this check box if you want all of your bookings to be final. Changes will then be prohibited.

Bank details (for type bank)

Use this option only if you want to use Xentral for your SEPA direct debit procedure.

DATEV

You can dedicate a certain account for your future DATEV export to this connection. Talk to your tax counselor or accountant about this.

CSV Import

Use this option if you want to use a CSV import for this account. Refer to this article for a detailed explanation.

Automating the import

It is possible to automate the import of your payment transactions to Xentral. You need the following options to automate the import.

Live import

Live import active: Activates or deactivates the live import. This checkbox allows you to pick up payment transactions in the Receipt of payments module. Use the options in the Process Starter section to automate it.
Period: The time period at which you want the import to run.
At times: Use this option if you want the import to run at a selected hour.
Access data: Xentral fills out this field when you use the pop-up window to create the connection. The field contains the API data and passwords for your connection. Some interfaces contain more specific options in this field. This is important for Amazon Pay.
Password safe: If you want to encrypt the password of your connection, use the Set password button.

Account-specific settings

You can use these fields instead of the Access data field. The set of fields varies depending on the chosen interface.

Process starter

Automatically collect incoming payments - Select this check box to enable Xentral to pick up automatically all payment transactions of this account.

Book incoming payments automatically - This allows Xentral to import all transactions and book those transactions to invoices and orders directly.

Note: To automate the booking, the following parameters must match between the payment transactions subject and your order/invoice:

Order invoice number must be a part of the subject
Order number of your shop (if the customer does not know the order number in Xentral)
The transactions amount
Transaction number (for PayPal, Shopify Payments, and Amazon Pay)

Starting value for the account

Since Xentral can only import your transaction data and not your total balance, you can add the accounts balance for the starting day of your import. Select the Sum up check box so that Xentral sums up all future transactions to this balance. This allows you to see the total accounts balance in the Receipt of payments module.