WooCommerce & ISR

Payment by invoice is still the most used payment method – also in online shops. A recent study showed again that over 48 % of consumers prefer to choose the payment method invoice followed by credit cards and PostFinance Card. However, the invoice payments bring challenges for the merchants. Besides the counterparty risk there is also the reconciliation effort on how to manage open invoices with payments effectively.

The wallee WooCommerce Plugin provides you a convenient way to create a compliant ISR invoice (orange inpayment slip), including the possibility to import the V11 / camt.054 / camt.053 files from your bank. These files contain the payments from your clients and all the necessary information to match them automatically with your open invoices. If you like, wallee also offers solutions for all subsequent processes like dunning or legal debt collection. The following blog post provides you a deep-dive into the usage of ISR payments with wallee and WooCommerce.

What is ISR (Orange Payment Slips)

ESR (German version) means "Einzahlungsschein mit Referenznummer". In English it means payment slip with a reference number or in short: Orange payment slip. Payments with a reference number are processed automatically and therefore more quickly. ISR also makes invoicing and sales ledger accounting easier for you as a merchant due to multiple reasons:

• Using ISR in Switzerland enables you to simplify the reconciliation process of your paid invoices. There is no manual process to match the payment needed anymore as the reference number contains a checksum and therefore can not be entered the wrong way.
• Your bank will provide you a file that contains all the payments of the period. This file can be imported and processed. The payments will be matched automatically with your invoices.

Payments through ISR offer many advantages in the handling of invoices for merchants. However, there are also some challenges, which discourage merchants from providing ISR invoices to their clients:

• Fulfilling the ISR requirements for invoices is not that easy. You do have to create an invoice document that complies with the design rules of the banks. Beside creating the optical character recognition (OCR) parts of the invoices that allow an automated reconciliation process, the elements on the payment slip have to be placed according to very strict standards.
• ISR payments are a local scheme in Switzerland, therefore it is hard to find existing plugins that are able to comply with the mentioned challenges and requirements above.
• Beside creating the document you do also need to have the functionality to import the v11 and camt files to match the payments of your clients automatically.
• The merchant needs also a way to manage open invoices and send out reminder emails or letters or in worst cases to start the debt collection process.
• Invoices provide besides technical challenges also counter party risks that the client is not paying the invoices. This is why we are working on integrating solvency checks. However, at this moment wallee allows you to provide invoices to returning customers. This means, that only customers, which order for the second time will be presented with the invoice payment method.

How wallee helps you to cope with the ISR challenges

wallee tries to take care of the challenges mentioned above. You as a merchant should be enabled to accept ISR invoice payments in your WooCommerce Shop easily. wallee takes care of the invoice creation process, invoice matching and all subsequent processes. Here is a quick overview of the wallee features followed by a detailed presentation of the different features:

1. wallee allows you to create the invoice document for you and deliver it to your customers (via email or post). You can easily modify the look and feel of the invoices with the integrated resource editor.
2. Paid invoices are registered automatically. You can simply upload the payment file provided by your bank. wallee offers even an automatic import of the files for certain banks.
3. Invoices can be sent directly to the customer via email or the postal service.
4. Open invoices can be reminded automatically. Define your own reminder process including the fees.
5. Pending debt claims can be sent automatically to the debt enforcement office via Tilbago.

”You are able to create invoices with payment slips and the according reference number.”

Below you find an example of the WooCommerce Plugin in action:

Setup WooCommerce plugin

First of all, there is the question where to get the wallee WooCommerce plugin. The free wallee WooCommerce plugin is offered via the WordPress market place or our github repository. If you run on WooCommerce 3.0 or later you can get the plugin now. The setup of the WooCommerce wallee plugin is pretty simple. All you need to do is to follow the wiki we’ve created for you. Here, we're just highlighting the most important points.

1. Integrate the free WooCommerce plugin of wallee. You need to download and install it in the backend of your WooCommerce store.


Download the plugin in the backend of your WooCommerce store

2. Head over to your wallee account. Create an application user that is allowed to access the space you want to link to the store. You will then be provided with the login credentials of the application users. Save these data as you need it in the next step.


Create an application user and save the login credentials

3. Change to the backend of your store and configure the plugin. You need to provide the information from before: the user ID, the application user key and the space ID. The plugin will configure your space and create the payment methods automatically.


Configure the plugin with the usage of the credentials

Create your own ISR orange payment slips

To be able to generate invoices and other documents, you just need to login to wallee. The PDF documents can be adjusted to every merchants needs and corporate identity. We provide a simple editor that lets you define the text colors, documents page margin etc. This allows you to create your invoice in your look and feel within minutes.

Editing the documents in the resource editor

The predefined settings can be changed according to your needs. The preview mode gives you a live impression of the look and feel of your invoices, e-mails and other documents wallee is able to create for you.

Editing the documents in the resource editor

Checkout Integration

You are able to create beautiful checkout flows and integrate them directly in the checkout of your shop. You've got the option to do that via the customizable payment pages through the resource editor or via iFrames. This is how the checkout with wallee may look like:

Checkout process with invoice as a payment method

(Automatic) Reconciliation of paid invoices

Once your customers start paying, you will be provided with camt or v11 files by your bank. For selected banks we do also offer a direct banking integration to automatically pull and process the reconciliation files. You do always have the option to manually download the file in the e-banking and upload in wallee. wallee supports the processing of .v11 and .camt files. As soon as you've uploaded them, the reconciliation process will be triggered. The order status will be synchronized directly with WooCommerce. The invoice status can be consulted in wallee.

Overview ISR files

wallee recognizes partially paid invoices and updates the PDF automatically to reflect the outstanding amount. Of course you are also able to define thresholds that will consider the invoices as paid even though not the full amount may be paid by the merchant.

In case your merchant uses the wrong amount or double pays the invoices: This will also be recognized. wallee offers you a screen that allows you to match unmatched entries manually.

Example paid invoice

Dunning and Debt Collection

wallee tries to provide a comprehensive solution for merchants. Therefore, we do also offer subsequent processes for merchants:

• After creating the invoice, you are enabled to create dunning flows and dunning levels based on your own preferences. You can create different dunning levels, define how the client should be informed (email or letter) and assign costs to the different levels. You can either select the predefined flows depending on the different laws in each country or you choose to set a flow, which will be configured on your preferences.


Dunning Flows

If you do not succeed to collect the payment you can directly proceed with the legal debt collection and open automatically a legal case in the corresponding debt collection office via our partner Tillbago.

Future Proof

The famous and popular payment slip will be replaced by a QR invoice during this year. Essentially, it will have the same functions as the classical payment slip, which existed for more than a hundred years. However, there are many new features and functions added. The QR invoice will be more comfortable, more flexible, digital and process-suited. As soon as the new QR invoice will be available we will make sure to let you know all the necessary updates. wallee and the feature invoice will be updated, too. You will have the option to use the QR invoice and print it directly out of wallee, as you've been able to do it with the invoices.

Example QR invoice (SIX, 2017)

Requirements and costs

To use the WooCommerce integration, you need to fulfill these two requirements:

• Create a WooCommerce/WordPress and a wallee account. You need at least an Advanced Subscription.
• ISR payments are normally free. Make sure you sign up for the service and you will receive the participant number from your bank.

Demo

To get a feeling of how the whole store works, you can have a look into a demo store.

Summary

According to different studies, merchants are able to increase their sales if they add the payment method invoice to their portfolio. However, accepting invoices creates challenges for merchants. wallee tries to tackle those challenges and automates the different processes through the following features:

• wallee lets you create your own invoices and integrates the seamlessly in your payment flow.
• Import the payment files and match the payments with the open invoices automatically.
• wallee also provides tools and services for the subsequent processes such as dunning and debt collection

Support

If you have any remaining questions, do not hesitate to contact us.