New Functionality

We have added a new "Import Payout" action to the Payout List. Since Payouts are generated by GoCardless, we needed a way of trigerring an update for Payouts that do not yet exist in Astral GoCardless. If a GoCardless payout does not exist in Astral GoCardless, you can now simply enter the GoCardless ID for the payout and it will create the entry in Astral GoCardless within Business Central.

Issue Resolutions

No other issues have been resolved in this release.

Coming Soon

We will be adding functionality for GoCardless' new Instant Bank Pay feature.

We will be adding the ability to utilise the new "Email Scenarios" functionality that is now available in Business Central.

We will be adding the ability to automate the Payment Batch creation and submission process.

We will be adding the ability to add a 'Pay by Direct Debit' link to invoices.

The extension currently targets Version 18, but is fully compatible with Version 19. The next release will target Version 19.

New Functionality

Previously an Active Mandate included those with a status of "Pending Customer Approval". This is because once GoCardless have assigned a Mandate ID it is possible to create a future dated payment against it, even though the setup is not fully complete. However, when a customer requires "Dual Signatures" on their bank account, the first signatory follows the flow within GoCardless, a Mandate ID is assigned, but due to restrictions in the UK BACS scheme, the mandate needs to then follow a paper based process, and we noticed that the setup of many Direct Debit Mandates were not being finalised. We felt that these mandates should not be included as Active mandates, and so are now excluded from the "Create Payment Batch" routine. However, we have added an additional flag to the routine to allow you to create payments where the mandate status is "Pending Customer Approval" if you wish.

Issue Resolutions

None.

Coming Soon

We will be adding functionality for GoCardless' new Instant Bank Pay feature.

We will be adding the ability to utilise the new "Email Scenarios" functionality that is now available in Business Central.

We will be adding the ability to automate the Payment Batch creation and submission process.

We will be adding the ability to add a 'Pay by Direct Debit' link to invoices.

New Functionality

We have added a new action to the Customer Ledger Entries page so that it is easier to see where an invoice has been included on a previous Payment Batch.

We removed a restriction on cancelling Payment Entries that have been sent to GoCardless. If the Payment Entry has a status of "Pending Customer Approval" it can now also be cancelled.

An "Update All" action has been added to the payment entries page. We noticed that a few webhooks were not being received (possibly because the account connection between Astral GoCardless and the GoCardless merchant account was removed), and so the action allows you to manually refresh all the "In Progress" entries within the Payment Batch rather than refreshing each Payment Entry individually.

The "Payment Method" and "Payment Terms" fields have been added to the "Payment Entry Application" page. This means that if you are using either of these fields to drive which invoices should be collected by a payment, it is clearer to see if they should be included in the payment.

The "Astral GoCardless Mandate List" page is now searchable.

The core "Customer Info" pane (visible from Sales Orders etc) now includes a counter for "Active Mandates" and "Pending Mandates".

The are some behind the scenes changes in preparation for some new Mandate statuses in relation to GoCardless' new Instant Bank Pay.

We have upgraded the version of the GoCardless api that the extension uses.

The extension now targets the version 18 release of Business Central.

The extension now uses a Permission Set object, which is the newer way of providing a permission set. The new Permissions Set is called "A365GC ASTRAL GOCAR.". The old Permission Set was called "ASTRAL GOCARDLESS". Ideally we would have liked to have kept the name the same, but due to naming conventions, it had to start with A365GC, and is limited to 20 characters.

Issue Resolutions

When a Merchant upgrades their GoCardless account, the new Mandate ID updated correctly, but the Mandate Status was not updated to Active. This is now resolved.

An issue was identified where if an invoice was part paid through Astral GoCardless, the remaining amount could not be included in a subsequent Payment Entry. This is now resolved.

Coming Soon

We will be adding functionality for GoCardless' new Instant Bank Pay feature.

We will be adding the ability to utilise the new "Email Scenarios" functionality that is now available in Business Central.

We will be adding the ability to automate the Payment Batch creation and submission process.

We will be adding the ability to add a 'Pay by Direct Debit' link to invoices.

New Functionality

There is no new functionality in this release.

Issue Resolutions

Where Payouts include Payout Items that were not created by Astral GoCardless, a message was correctly displayed when posting the Payout that the user would need to use 'Create Journal Only' switch, due to payment with an unknown customer. However, on attempting to post again, some of the Payout Items were not included as they had been flagged as Posted.

A payout has the ability to be 'Marked as Posted'. We also have the ability to 'Mark as Unposted'. This routine now looks at the Payout Items (the lines) as well as the Payout (the header) to see if any entries are flagged as posted = true. Previously, the routine only worked if the Payout (the header) was set as Posted = true. This issue has also been resolved by the change above.

In standard Business Central, there is a restriction when posting a cash receipt that you cannot apply the payment to an invoice that has a Posting Date that is after the Posting Date of the Payment. Where a Payment is collected for a future dated invoice, an error was raised when trying to create the Cash Receipt Journal, and a work around was required in order for the Cash Receipt Journal to be created. The process no longer tries to add an application to a future date invoice.

Coming Soon

We will be adding the ability to utilise the new "Email Scenarios" functionality that is now available in Business Central.

We will be adding the ability to automate the Payment Batch creation and submission process.

We will be adding the ability to add a 'Pay by Direct Debit' link to invoices.

The extension currently targets Version 17, but is fully compatible with Version 18. The next release will target Version 18.

We will be upgrading the version of the GoCardless api that the extension uses.

We will be extending the capabilities to use the superb new "Instant Payment" functionality that GoCardless have introduced.

New Functionality

We have added a 'Payment Advice' report (available when viewing the Payment Entries within the Payment Batch) that can be sent to customers notifying them of the amount that will be collected from their bank account, and the breakdown of the invoices to which it relates. The report can be printed or sent by email. Sending the report will be a manual process at the moment, but a future release will take care of automating this process. Customers are already notified by an email from GoCardless that a payment is being collected, but where a single payment is used for payment of multiple invoices, customers were requesting allocation details.

The 'No. of Mandates' flowfield on the Customer List has been replaced with two flowfields, "Pending GoCardless Mandates" & "Active GoCardless Mandates". The previous flowfield was confusing as some customers were sent paylinks, but did not or would not complete them. It is now easier to see which customers have a mandate that can be collected from.

We have added an 'Export to Excel' action to the Payout page.

Issue Resolutions

There are currently no known issues.

New Functionality

None

Issue Resolutions

The Customer Name field in the core application was increased to 100 characters, and we therefore needed to increase the Customer Name field on the Astral GoCardless Mandate table.

Coming Soon

We will be adding a Collection Advice report that can be emailed to customers to provide a breakdown of the invoices included on a Payment.

New Functionality

Added Amount field to Payment Batch page so that the user could easily see the total amount of Payment Entries contained within the Payment Batch.

Issue Resolutions

Increased the number of Payout Items requested when calling the GoCardless api to reduce unnecessary api requests.

The New Mandate Entry Wizard allowed the user to specify the Given Name and Family Name, but the values were taken from the Contact instead.

Coming Soon

The next release will utilise the new "Email Scenarios" functionality that is now available in Business Central.

New Functionality

Prevent auto posting of Payouts if a Currency Triangulation Entry has been created. Should a posting require a Triangulation Difference journal line, we decided that it would be better to let the user know, and so the user will be forced to use the "Create Journal Only" switch when posting the payout.

Issue Resolutions

Add "Payment Description" field to the Payment Entry. Rather than taking the Payment Description value from the mandate itself, we now default the value through from the Mandate but allow it to be changed before submission to GoCardless. Setting the value is mandatory. We received reports that the emails being sent from GoCardless had an empty space where the payment description should have gone. This was caused by mandates that were created outside of Astral GoCardless and imported using the "Find Missing Mandates" functionality. After importing a mandate, the user should manually add a "Mandate Description" so the value will default through to the new field on the Payment Entry.

Enable getting more then 50 Mandates when using Find Missing Mandates. There was a GoCardless api call limit of 50 records. We now page through all Mandates when trying to find ones that are not in Astral GoCardless.

New Functionality

The core extension now targets the version 17 release of Business Central.

Issue Resolutions

There was an issue where the Payout items were not completely populating.

New Functionality

Added Dataverse (CDS) integration, enabling integration with Dynamics 365 for Sales.

Added automatic import of mandates that are created outside of Astral GoCardless (e.g. via the GoCardless api or via the GoCardless portal), triggered when the Metadata specifies the Business Central Customer No.

The Business Central user can now create the mandate themselves if they know the sort code and account number, without the need for emailing a PayLink. A new Wizard has been added to simplify the process of choosing how the mandate should be created (manually or via a PayLink).

A "Mark All Entries As Processed" action was added to the Notifications list. If extensive use is made of the GoCardless portal, there will be many Notifications that will not be processed, as they relate to data that Astral GoCardless doe not know about. Some users found it time intensive to clear off all the entries.

Issue Resolutions

There was an issue when importing mandates. A filtering issue when trying to display a list of potential companies to map against has been resolved.

Some payouts contain Payout Items that have a zero amount. These caused an issue when trying to transfer to the Payout Journal.

Some Payouts cannot be transferred to a Cash Receipt Journal. For example, some Payouts have no Payout Items, and therefore no Payout Date. We added the ability to "Set As Posted", so the entry disappears from the Role Centre Tile.

New Functionality

None

Issue Resolutions

Resolved an issue where in some scenarios a GoCardless Payout journal would not post due to the GoCardless Creditor Payout Currency Code not being specified in the GoCardless account.

New Functionality

None

Issue Resolutions

Resolved a minor issue with the Application Setup Wizard which surfaced when Merchants weren't set up for International Payments with GoCardless.

Resolved an issue when importing missing mandates from the GoCardless Merchant account. If more than one missing mandate is found, it tried to use the same Mandate No. and raised an error.

The initial release including mandate creation, payment batch creation, refunds and subscriptions. It doesn't include Instalment Schedules, but this will follow shortly.

It includes Success+, which is great for reducing failed Direct Debit charges and also includes Borderless Payments, which is why Astral 365 were so keen to build this extension.