New Functionality

There is no new functionality in this release.

Issue Resolutions

The extension now targets Business Central version 24.2 and is fully compatible with the upcoming version 25.

Coming Soon

We will be providing the ability to call the "Create Payment Batch" process and for triggering the actions that are available on the Payment Entries page. This will allow developers to further automate the Direct Debit collection process.

New Functionality

There is no new functionality in this release.

Issue Resolutions

NOTE: This release also covers versions 2.10.22.0 & 2.11.22.0.

A user notified us of a recurring error being received when collecting Notifications. On investigation we found that after downloading the notifications, the subsequent api call ('RemoveNotifications') back to the Astral 365 service to archive the notifications was timing out. Therefore, although the Notifications were being downloaded to Business Central, they were being repeatedly downloaded compounding the amount of data and resulting in a timeout. This therefore lead to the Job Queue no longer automatically processing them.

We released 2.10.22.0 to add a batch size to the 'RemoveNotifications' api call, and we now call the api in a loop with batches of records to be removed. We also added additional Telemetry logging to the extension and to our back end Astral 365 Service. Version 2.10.22.0 was specifically released for a single user, and the code amendments were restricted to a particular tenant.

After releasing the above, although the batching and looping proved to be successful, the procedure was still timing out. Further investigation highlighted that the cause of the issue was some corrupt data in our Azure storage generated by the Microsoft SDK that we are using on 3rd January 2025. We found and resolved these issues with changes to our Astral 365 service, and we released version 2.11.22.0 making the changes released in 2.10.22.0 available to all tenants.

After resolving the issue above, and with the additional telemetry that we are collecting, we decided to do a thorough review of the 'Uncollected Notifications' for all users. We identified a further issue with a single user that was still running an older version of the extension. In this instance we found that after downloading the Notifications via the Job Queue, an error was being raised in the subsequent "Process All Notifications" task. This error correctly rolled back the transaction to the previous 'commit', but the previous commit was after downloading the Notifications, and not after issuing the api call to remove the Notifications that had just been downloaded. We identified that a further 'commit' was required after calling the 'Remove Notifications' api call to make the whole process more robust.

The Notifications functionality was designed and built nearly five years ago, and has worked flawlessly, without a single change, up until 3rd January 2025. The changes released to the extension were largely required for a single user that processes over 20,000 Direct Debit payments in a single batch.

Coming Soon

We will be providing the ability to call the "Create Payment Batch" process and for triggering the actions that are available on the Payment Entries page. This will allow developers to further automate the Direct Debit collection process.

New Functionality

When a GoCardless resource is created/updated/deleted, an event is raised which becomes a "Notification" in Astral GoCardless. When the Notification is downloaded and processed, if an error occurred, it sometimes needed to be manually re-processed. Sometimes the user's own code needed to attach MetaData to the resource so that it could then be processed without error (for example, adding a BCCUSTOMERID tag). We have therefore added a new Setup field called "Retry Errors Since Dateformula". If a value is specified (for example <-1D>) previously errored notifications will be automatically reprocessed for up to 1 day.

Issue Resolutions

No issues have been resolved in this release.

Coming Soon

We will be providing the ability to call the "Create Payment Batch" process and for triggering the actions that are available on the Payment Entries page. This will allow developers to further automate the Direct Debit collection process.

New Functionality

When "Process Notifications" imports new mandates that are mapped to a Business Central Customer using the BCCUSTOMERID MetaData, the "Mandate Description" is set to the "Default Mandate Description" in the "Astral GoCardless Setup" page.

We have added a codeunit called "A365GC Astral GoCardless API" to provide integration possibilities. In this codeunit we have added a procedure called "UpdateMandateEmailAddress". This provides the same functionality as using the "Change Mandate Email" on the Mandate page. Whilst we do not use the Customer."E-Mail" field as the source of the Mandate.Email, users requested the ability to trigger a Mandate Email Address update (at GoCardless) when the Customer."E-Mail" field was changed.

We added a new Setup field called "Set Mandate No. on Documents". This is set as disabled by default, but for existing users of Astral GoCardless the field will be enabled as part of the version update (to ensure that they see no change). When the field is disabled (the default value), the "Default Mandate No." is no longer stored on the "Sales Invoice", "Service Invoice" or "Service Contract" documents. Where customers regularly cancel Direct Debits and then create new ones, having the "Default Mandate No." stored required too many manual updates.

Issue Resolutions

In rare circumstances, not all Payment Entries in a Payment Batch were sent to GoCardless. This meant that the ones that didn't get sent needed to be either sent manually (one at a time), or removed from the batch and added to a new batch. The "Send to GoCardless" page action can now also be used to send entries that did not get sent the first time. The "rare circumstances" seemed to be where there was a disruption to the service caused by a Microsoft update.

It is no longer possible to mark a Payment Batch as Completed without first acknowledging any failures.

When Acknowledging failures, multiple records can now be selected and acknowledged together. Previously they had to be acknowledged one at a time.

The extension is now fully compatible with Business Central V25.

Coming Soon

When a GoCardless resource is created/updated/deleted, an event is raised which becomes a "Notification" in Astral GoCardless. When the Notification is downloaded and processed, if an error occurred, it sometimes needs to be manually re-processed. Sometimes the user's own code needs to attach MetaData to the resource in GoCardless so that it can then be processed without error (for example, adding a BCCUSTOMERID MetaData tag). We will therefore be adding a new Setup field called "Retry Errors Since Dateformula". If a value is specified (for example <-1D>) previously errored notifications will be automatically reprocessed for up to 1 day. This change is a replication of a change recently added to our Astral Pay extension which we feel will be useful to users of Astral GoCardless.

New Functionality

There is no new functionality in this release.

Issue Resolutions

Regional settings were affecting the posting of the Payout journal. The issue has arisen since the roll out of Business Central version 24.

"Payment Charged Back" Payout Items were not being included in the Payout journal, causing an imbalance that needed to be manually updated before posting.

Coming Soon

There are no major changes planned.

New Functionality

There is no new functionality in this release.

Issue Resolutions

We have resolved an issue on the Posted Sales Invoice page extension that caused performance issues with Business Central's new Analyse Mode functionality.

Coming Soon

There are no major changes planned.

New Functionality

There is no new functionality in this release.

Issue Resolutions

A permission to the Posted Sales Invoice record was added for changing the Mandate to use.

We resolved an issue where the New Mandate Wizard was using the bank details from a previous mandate for the customer, even though the mandate was cancelled.

Coming Soon

There are no major changes planned.

New Functionality

We added "Customer No." (not hidden) and "Customer Name" (hidden) fields to the "Subscription List" page.

Issue Resolutions

The extension now targets Business Central Version 22.

A small change was required to make the extension compatible with the next major release of Business Central (Version 23). Microsoft have deprecated the 'Assisted Setup' codeunit and moved the functionality to a 'Guided Experience' codeunit, and so references to the older codeunit had to be removed.

Coming Soon

There are no major changes planned.

New Functionality

When creating a payment batch, the routine looks for open Invoices. It does not deduct open unapplied Credit Memos, and this is by design. However, it is useful to be able to see if there are unapplied Credit Memos for the customer. Therefore, we added an "Unapplied Credits" field to the "Astral GoCardless Payment Entries" page to give a visual indicator that you may potentially be collecting too much from the customer.

We have added "Payment Method Code" to the "Create Payment Batch" request page. This means that the payments that are to be collected can be filtered at the individual invoice level for specific Payment Method Codes. This is particularly useful if you are also using our Astral Pay extension for collecting payments by Debit/Credit Card.

We have also added a "Use Payment Discount" switch to the "Create Payment Batch" request page, meaning that the extension is now compatible with standard Payment Discount functionality.

Previously the Mandate No. could be changed on the Customer Ledger Entry. Now when doing this, it also updates the Mandate No. on the Posted Sales Invoice if the invoice is still open.

Issue Resolutions

Billing Requests made in France were sending "sepa" to the GoCardless api, but should have been sending "sepa_core". This has now been resolved.

When adding the payment link to a Posted Sales Invoice, the filtering for the Payment Method Code (to evaluate whether a link should be inserted) has been improved. An issue was reported on our Astral Pay extension, and we have replicated that issue resolution to the Astral GoCardless extension.

Coming Soon

The next release will target V22.

We will be adding premium version functionality for the ability to brand the pages that are hosted by Astral 365.

We will be adding premium version functionality for the ability to add email signatures and allow a choice of logos that are added to the emails and to the printed invoices.

New Functionality

The "Find Missing Mandates" process now picks up the "Default Mandate Description" from the Astral GoCardless Setup record as the "Mandate Description". We added the "Default Mandate Description" field in a previous release when we introduced the "Instant Bank Pay" functionality, and it made sense to also use this field when importing new mandates.

CDS integration has now been renamed to DataVerse.

Issue Resolutions

The extension now uses the Company "DisplayName" rather than the "CompanyName" during the registration process.

GoCardless made a change in their underlying api which meant that their older api's now utilise their newer Billing Request api. This led to quite a few Notification errors stating that the Billing Request could not be found. These aren't actually errors, and the new version no longer flags them as such. On upgrading, the previous errors relating to this are removed.

Minor changes to the CDS (now DataVerse) integration now means that the extension is fully compatible with the upcoming V22 release of Business Central.

Coming Soon

The next release will target V21.

We will be adding premium version functionality for the ability to brand the pages that are hosted by Astral 365.

We will be adding premium version functionality for the ability to add email signatures and allow a choice of logos that are added to the emails and to the printed invoices.

New Functionality

The extension now targets V20. It is fully compatible with V21.

Issue Resolutions

On upgrading the Default Email Templates were not being auto-generated.

The Error Details page did not always show the Additional Information.

When posting a payout and using the option to "Create Journal Only", depending on the country version, the Source Code may not have been populated on the journal.

Coming Soon

The next release will target V21.

We will be adding premium version functionality for the ability to brand the pages that are hosted by Astral 365.

We will be adding premium version functionality for the ability to add email signatures and allow a choice of logos that are added to the emails and to the printed invoices.

New Functionality

We have now incorporated GoCardless' "Instant Bank Pay" functionality in to the solution, which allows customers to make an instant payment using Open Banking. To enable this functionality, we are now integrating to their new Billing Requests api. The changes in realtion to this are as follows:

• We have added a Billing Requests page link to the Main Menu so that users can see a list of all the Billing Requests created.
• A Billing Request can be created (and sent by email) from the Customer, Posted Sales Invoice, Sales Quote, Sales Order & Sales Invoice pages and also the corresponding list pages.
• The Billing Request can be used to request a mandate, request a payment or request both a mandate and a payment.
• The Posted Sales Invoices list page shows "GoCardless Billing Request Link Exists".
• We have added the ability to add an Astral GoCardless payment service link to a Document. This means that Invoices can have billing request links automatically created and added to them via Business Central's standard Payment Services feature.

Please note however that the Instant Bank Pay feature is currently only available for GBP payments, and EUR payments in Germany. Your GoCardless' merchant account will determine if you are able to utilise the functionality.'

We have also taken the opportunity to add a few features that have been requested by users. These include:

• The ability to Change the Email Address of a Mandate. This means that GoCardless can email the correct person, in case the employee leaves. This is available from the Mandate Card Page.
• The Customer List page now shows "Pending Amount" to make it clearer that there are pending payments from the customer.
• The Customer Ledger Entries page shows "Pending Amount" to make it clearer that there is a pending payment in relation to the invoice.

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Issue Resolutions

No issues have been resolved in this release.

Coming Soon

Whilst the extension is compatible with Business Central version 20, the next release will target Business Central version 20.

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

New Functionality

There is no new functionality in this release.

Issue Resolutions

An issue was reported where Subscriptions were failing to create when they were set as monthly and on day 24. Investigation highlighted a minor typo in an enum. This issue has now been resolved.

Coming Soon

Whilst the extension is now compatible with Business Central version 20, the next release will target Business Central version 20.

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

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

An issue was reported where GoCardless payments that were automatically created by GoCardless from a Subscription that was created by Astral GoCardless was not importing the new payment as a new Payment Batch / Payment Entry. The Notifications received in relation to the new payment showed an error that the paymnent could not be found, whereas it should have imported the payment. The result being that the Cash Receipt Journal that was created from the Payout wasn't able to look up the Payment ID and find which customer the payment related to. This issue has now been resolved.

Coming Soon

Whilst the extension is now compatible with Business Central version 20, the next release will target Business Central version 20.

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

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

Email Accounts must be used for sending the PayLink emails. Email details configured in the older "SMTP Mail Setup" can no longer be used. IMPORTANT: If you want to email PayLinks, you must ensure that an "Email Account" exists that is either configured as "Default" or has the "GoCardless PayLink" Email Scenario assigned to it.

We have introduced a configurable Email Header and Email Lines table rather than use Reports for generating the mandate emails. We have done this so that we can introduce GoCardless' new Instant Bank Pay functionality in to the extension. On first releasing Astral GoCardless we believed that using a report that could be customised as a word layout would be the best option. However, with so many languages, we believe that it makes it far too complex. After upgrading the extension will work as before, but we recommend switching off the new "Use Report For Mandate Email" field in the Setup record once you have created and reviewed the message text contained within the Email Lines.

A new "Fees Account" is now used instead of the older "Fees G/L Account". This means that you can now opt to post the fees to a Vendor Account.

The extension is now available in Malta.

The extension now targets Business Central version 19.

Issue Resolutions

The extension is now fully compatible with the upcoming version 20 release of Business Central. Note that for the extension to be compatible, we had to remove all references to the older "SMTP Mail Setup" table and related objects. Please ensure that you have set up Email Accounts within Business Central if you want to email PayLinks to your customers.

Coming Soon

Whilst the extension is now compatible with Business Central version 20, the next release will target Business Central version 20.

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

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 "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.