Payment references can be essential when creating invoices for your customers. The following article explains more about payment references and how you can use them in your invoices with Zervant.
What are payment references
Payment references are references that your customer should use when paying an invoice - it will allow you to match the incoming payment to the outstanding invoice. The payment reference is usually provided by you, unlike most of the other reference fields in Zervant (i.e., buyer’s purchase order, buyer’s reference, etc.).
Different types
Depending on the country, payment references follow different standards, even though the EU is trying to push for an ISO European standard. Users are not bound by law to use any specific standard, it is just a matter of localisation.
Why is the type so important?
Zervant is aiming at being the leader of the e-invoicing market. For that, payment references have to follow some rules, set by the different actors of the e-invoicing networks:
- The payment reference type must be passed to our e-invoicing partner Basware, so we need to know what reference type our user wants
- The payment reference needs to be in a specific format. Some banks will not accept an invalid payment reference for a bank transfer.
What are the payment reference types supported by Zervant
European Standard (ISO standard)
An alphanumeric string, up to 25 characters long, with the letters "RF" at the beginning.
Zervant automatically pre-fills the letters RF when this type is chosen. You then have to add between 3 and 23 numbers after that.
Finnish Standard
A numeric string with 4 to 20 digits. The last digit is a checksum.
Zervant pre-fills a number based on the invoice number and adds the check digit when creating a new invoice. However, you can also insert your own reference number.
Belgian Standard
A visual string built like the following +++ 3 digits / 4 digits / 5 digits / +++ (example: +++010/8068/17183+++). The last 2 digits are a checksum.
Zervant pre-fills this automatically randomly. You cannot change it.
How to use the reference types
You can select the payment reference type:
- from the invoice >Settings side panel under >Visible references
- from the label >Payment reference itself in your invoice
- by default in >My Account >Invoicing settings under >Visible references
