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How to set up the payment reference?

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alt text As part of the settlement procedure, JustOn Cash Management can execute payment matching operations: it compares bank statement items (and payments created from them) with accounts and entries, looking for matching data like the customer number or statement number – as passed with the reference text – or the amount. For details, see Automatic Settlement Using Data Comparison.

The statements on which the entries are based typically include an ID, like an invoice number, order number, etc. If so, this number is saved as statement no to the entry record. Preferably, payers then include this statement number in the reference text of their payment orders. Since this reference is also part of the bank statement item, JustOn Cash Management can relate the matching strings.

For good matching results, the data quality is essential – the information must be recognizable. With this respect, there are a number of recommended practices.

Statement number

Generally, providing the statement number in the payment reference produces the best results. At that, the statement number must comply with a recognizable pattern so that the payment matching logic is able to identify it.

If you use JustOn Billing & Invoice Management to produce invoices – based on which your entries are created –, you apply the counter and number range functionality. Doing so, you specify the pattern of the produced number.

The pattern [Year][AccountAccountName|cut:6]{000000} (year + customer name, truncated to six characters + 6-digit statement number) will produce an invoice number like 2024Salesf123456.

Info

Special characters like -, /, ;, : etc. are likely to be removed from the reference string upon transaction processing by the banks. JustOn therefore recommends not to include these characters when defining the number pattern for the produced invoices.

In JustOn Cash Management, you specify the pattern to match as part of the matching configuration. This will be the basis for the data comparison.

The corresponding input string filter to match the example invoice number (year + customer name, truncated to six characters + 6-digit statement number) would look like 20\\d{2}\\D{1,6}\\d{6}.

String placement
The string to be evaluated should, preferably, be at the beginning of the Reference field of the bank statement item. For the best matching results, you should therefore ask your customers to only specify the invoice number in the payment reference.
Custom payment references or special characters?

Your business may require custom payment references or special characters in invoice numbers.

To this end, you define a custom payment reference field on the invoice and the entry, and then define a dedicated matching configuration to match the string.

Proceed as follows:

  1. alt text Create a custom payment reference field (without ON prefix) on the Invoice object (ONB2__Invoice__c), for example, PaymentReason.

    Using a formula, you can apply custom logic to produce the intended payment reference or to remove special characters from the invoice number.

  2. Create the custom payment reference field (no formula field) with the same API name on the Entry object (JPAY1__Entry__c).

    Following the example, use PaymentReason.

  3. Create a corresponding matching configuration using the template "Entry by custom field".

    The parser configuration must specify the pattern to match, and the search configuration must specify the relevant entry field, like {"target-field" : "paymentreason__c"}. For details, see Search Templates and Configuration Options.

Once set up, the custom payment reference will be transferred to the entry on invoice finalization. When retrieving the bank statements, the payment matching will take place – checking for the custom payment reference pattern.