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Technical application
Follow our step-by-step instruction guide to fill out your technical application for your live account.
Please note that this section does not cover any legal or contractual parts of your live account application. Make sure you've been in touch with a sales contact for all non-technical contractual topics.
Accounting as a Service is a powerful system that on the one hand can be considered a predefined product, but on the other hand is highly configurable to meet your needs. To do so, additional information is needed to set up and configure your live account.
To make your technical onboarding process as easy as possible, we have created a technical application form to be filled out and sent to us. Please download the questionnaire and follow the step-by-step instruction guide below to compile and provide all relevant information.
Once you completed the form, please send it via email to accounting-support@riverty.com.
Step-by-step instruction guide
The following instructions will help you to fill out the application form. Please download the questionnaire to start the process. Each tab of the application form is to be considered a process step of the instruction guide.
General hint: When working with the application form, you will be provided with samples on each tab to better illustrate the information needed.
If you have questions during the process or need assistance, feel free to contact us via the contact form or contact your assigned sales or onboarding person.
Step 1: Registration contacts
The following information refers to the sheet "Step1 - Registration Contacts".
This step is supposed to let you fill out the contact details about the person in charge of the registration on your side. This is typically a project manager, a business analyst or a product owner.
The technical user email is the address to be used by you later on when creating the technical user account in the API Explorer in order to create your live account.
Step 2: Master data
The following information refers to the sheet "Step2 - Master Data".
Accounting as a Service's month-end closing concept is based on business codes which are defined as a tuple represented by the combination of a country and a currency (e.g. DE/EUR, FR/EUR, UK/GBP, etc.). Given that business codes are fundamental to Accounting as a Service, most of the configuration details must therefore be specified per business code. In this step, you will have to specify the complete list of business codes relevant for your business. Almost all the following steps will need to be defined per business code.
General information about business codes
Accounting as a Service's accounting is based on the concept of so-called business codes. A business code is the combination of a legal entity and the relevant currency (e.g. DE/EUR, FR/EUR, UK/GBP). Accounting as a Service's month-end- / year-end-reporting is separated per business code and in single currencies to prevent currency conversion discrepancies. A business code combines the following information:
- Country: The country of registration. If you have different legal entities (e.g. country entities or different brand entities), we support this with individual business codes. It is not important where the order is placed, but which tax scheme has to be applied. Therefore, the country depends on the registration of your business.
- Currency: To make sure that the data is not influenced by currency conversions, reporting will be done based on the currency in which we have received the orders. That means, if you e.g. have one legal entity which is selling goods in EUR and GBP, Accounting as a Service is set up with two business codes. If you have one entity which is selling goods e.g. in EUR in different countries, we will set up only one business code. Please note that if a currency or country in which your business is registered is not available in the application form, you should get in touch with us, and we will create the appropriate business code.
Please note that the company code number that you will be given for every business code is essential when working with the API of the accounting module.
Helpful hints
Some hints about the information requested in the scope of this process step:
| Field | Additional notes |
|---|---|
| Type of Business | Please state which product you are going to use. |
| Website URL of Company | The information is needed for outgoing communication such as invoices and dunning communication. |
| Your Logo (URL or File to be attached) | The logo is needed for outgoing communication such as invoices and dunning communication. |
| Fiscal year | To enable Accounting as a Service to close the periods according to your needs, we need to know your fiscal year's start- and end-month. |
| Shipping/Tax Countries | If you deliver goods or provide services out of the main country of the entity to other countries, local tax rates could apply - those needs to be activated in Accounting as a Service. |
| Expected Integration Test Start | We recommend an integration test with all involved parties/systems before going to production. To enable us to plan the setup and to provide the necessary support, please indicate when you are planning to start integration testing. Details (timeline and content) will then be aligned with the registration contacts. |
| Expected Go Live Date | When going live, we start to monitor your business and our manual exception handling services. Therefore, we need to know when you plan to go live. The exact timing will then be aligned with the registration contacts. |
Step 3: Number ranges
The following information refers to the sheet "Step3 - Number Ranges".
Accounting as a Service requires to configure the number ranges to enable us to e.g. match incoming payments properly. Please note that it is important that number ranges do not overlap to avoid mismatching, wrong dunning/collection activities and/or refunds.
Helpful hints
Some hints about the information requested in the scope of this process step:
| Number | Description | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Customer Account Number | This number should be the same in all involved systems, e.g. a webshop, an order management system, a subscription management system etc. | 20, alphanumeric |
| Order Number | This number is typically being generated in a webshop or e.g. a subscription portal, when a customer issues an order or a new subscription contract | 16, alphanumeric |
| Invoice Number | This number is usually being generated in an order management system or similar when goods are shipped or services are delivered | 30, alphanumeric |
| Contract Number | Only relevant if you have subscription business, and you are using Accounting as a Service Webshop but not use Accounting as a Service Subscription. The contract number indicates the unique number of a contract | 40, alphanumeric |
Step 4: Payment methods
The following information refers to the sheet "Step4 - Payment methods".
This section allows you to configure the payment methods to be supported. For each method, you will need to indicate the Payment Service Provider (PSP) as well as the capture handling to be applied. Also, you configure which payment method shall be supported by which business code.
Helpful hints
Some hints about the information requested in the scope of this process step:
| Field | Additional notes |
|---|---|
| Payment method | Accounting as a Service supports are a variety of payment methods. For more information, please check out the payment method section. You will have to provide the list of payment methods to be supported as part of your setup. |
| Capture | You will need to define the capture handling for each payment method. Please refer to the list of available capture options per payment method or (group of payment method) for more information. |
| Provider | For each payment method, you will have to indicate the Payment Service Provider (PSP) in charge. |
| Chargebacks and dispute handling | Accounting as a Service can handle chargebacks and disputes (if applicable) in your name, That means we take over the whole correspondence with e.g. the acquirer and provide documents to prove the transaction. This type of service is optional. In case you request activation as part of the technical application, we will get in touch with you to define the details. |
Step 5: Payment config
The following information refers to the sheet "Step5 - Payment config".
This section handles additional payment configuration details that need to be provided by per business code.
Helpful hints
Some hints about the information requested in the scope of this process step:
| Section/Field | Additional notes |
|---|---|
| 3D Secure | In the EU, 3D Secure is currently mandatory for most transactions. For non-EU countries, it is not. Please configure if it shall be activated for those countries as well or not (activation leads to conversion loss, but reduces fraud losses). For details about 3D Secure in general, please check the card payments section. |
| MailOrder/TelephoneOrder (MoTo) | In case of customers orderings goods via mail or phone, you will not be able to ask them for their CVV code and 3D Secure credentials. To avoid the system asking for these mandatory parameters, we need to set up a second payment channel per entity. In case you are going to use MoTo, please get in touch with us to get additional instruction details. |
| Velocity Check | Based on the email address and/or IP-address, Accounting as a Service determines whether a certain number of authorization attempts has been exceeded within an hour/day/week/month. This check is only applied to authorizations on a merchant/channel level. |
| Blacklist | If this feature is active, Accounting as a Service will check for all authorization requests and responses at a merchant/channel level whether the email address or email domain and/or the IP address is included in a blacklist. If a transaction matches any of the blacklisted criteria, Accounting as a Service will reject the related request. |
| Master Account Whitelist | This feature can be used to set up a master account whitelist, where a user can add a privileged email address and/or IP address that is exempt from risk checking. This feature can be useful for volume testing by client staff, especially in a production environment. If a transaction matches any criterion on the master account whitelist, all other risk checks will be ignored. The configuration section for the master account whitelist has the same layout and functionality as the one for the blacklist. If you already have a list of data to be added to the black-/whitelist, please provide it in a CSV format to enable us to upload it. |
| Sequence of Checks | The checks will be applied in the following order: Master Account Whitelist (if enabled), Blacklist (if enabled), Velocity check (if enabled). If one of the rules matches the transaction, any remaining rules will not be authenticationapplied. |
Step 6: Dunning, collection and risk
The following information refers to the sheet "Step6 - Dunning, collection and risk".
If you want Accounting as a Service to send out dunning notifications, these have to be configured as part of your setup. All parameters can be configured individually in the application form, but also changed later while business is running. If you need a customer-group specific dunning workflow, please reach out to us. Also, please note that Accounting as a Service allows monitoring of all related processes in its reporting portal.
A common standard dunning escalation process looks as follows:
- Level 1: Payment reminder (14 days overdue) via email
- Level 2: First dunning notification (14 days after payment reminder) via email
- Level 3: Second dunning notification (14 days after first dunning notification) via letter
- Level 4: Transfer to collection agency
Additional remarks:
- All open items will be included in the dunning communication.
- In the standard template, dunning will always be performed on account level If you need a dunning on invoice level, please get in touch with us.
- all values are in local currency.
Please note, that Accounting as a Service will archive all generated documents. You can access those documents via a notification or the myAccounting GUI.
Helpful hints
Some hints about the information requested in the scope of this process step:
| Field | Additional notes |
|---|---|
| Days until write-off of outstanding receivables | If outstanding receivables are below the dunning threshold or no dunning process is activated, the amounts will be written-off after this period of time |
| Paylink in Dunning Communication | A paylink can be added to all outgoing dunning communication if you wish to. Please be aware that additional transactional cost can occur. Check out paylink section below for more information. |
| Language(s) | Language(s) to be considered in the dunning communication for this business code |
| Channel | email or white letter |
| Days overdue | Receivables will be included in the dunning after a number of days after the individual due date. |
| Payment term | Number of days which are stated on the outgoing communication as a payment term. Should always be lower than the "Days Overdue" within the next dunning step. |
| Dunning interval | Number of days until the next dunning level will be reached, if the receivables are still outstanding. |
| Dunning Fee | Fees which will be added to the dunning communication. Fees will only be booked statistically until they are paid. If the consumer does not pay, fees will not be dunned and not booked as revenue. |
| Dunning threshold | Debtor accounts with lower overdue balance will not be included in the dunning process. |
| Reference Text | Custom reference. e.g. "Friendly Reminder", "Dunning Letter" or "Last Dunning Information". Check out the sample illustration below. |
| Text | Custom text which is stated in the outgoing dunning communication. If you need more languages per company code, please provide a text in all those languages. Check out the sample illustration below. |
| Collection Threshold | Minimum overdue amount to generate the dunning step. |
| Collection Agency | If you have chosen Level 4, please select a collection agency. We are happy to transfer funds to one of Rivertys own international collection agencies. Of course, you also have the option to use another collection agency or to split volumes to benchmark. In this case, just contact us to discuss the details. |
| Risk Management Provider | To optimize risk scoring, it often makes sense to feedback payment and dunning information to the risk management service. Accounting as a Service supports this via its risk management API. The following options are currently implemented: (1) Use Accounting as a Service's own risk service, (2) CRIF Bürgel. |
Sample reminder
A sample of a reminder document to showcase the use of the field "Reference text" and "Text".
Support of paylinks
Accounting as a Service can integrate paylinks or QR codes in emails and documents to provide your customers with the option to pay conveniently via alternative payment methods. Following paylinks, customers will first have to pass authentication checks before they will be provided with the list of open items from their account. Once they passed the authentication check, they can select from the list of open items to handle payment execution (e.g. by using a credit card or PayPal).
Paylink sample
A sample of a paylink procedure, from the authentication check to the payment execution.
Step 7: External provider setup
The following information refers to the sheet "Step7 - External provider setup".
Accounting as a Service offers a variety of payment methods and supports the connection to various Payment Service Providers. Payment method and PSP can be combined individually based on your needs. For some combinations, no further contracts (e.g. with the PSP) will be needed. However, this does not work for all combinations or PSPs (e.g. PayPal). In any case, if you prefer to have direct contracts with your PSPs, you are not obliged to contractually go via Accounting as a Service. Please note that when using external providers, you need to provide the necessary credentials to connect Accounting as a Service to all of your preferred providers. This section is about the provision of such data.
Please note that if the credentials related to the PROD environment are not yet available, these can be provided at a later stage. We usually don't need credentials for the TEST environment.
Helpful hints
For all external partners (except the bank partner), the following information will be needed:
- Merchant ID: Your unique "customer" number or identifier at the partner
- Credentials: Technical authentication data - differs from partner to partner. Usually a user / password + e.g. a token + a merchant ID or BIN. Please refer to the list of known 3rd party credential types for more information.
- Settlement credentials: Usually a daily settlement file / payment advice is provided on a SFTP server. We will need the URL, user and password to fetch the files automatically on a daily basis.
Below you can find some additional hints related to the information requested in the scope of this process step.
| External partner | Additional notes |
|---|---|
| Bank Partner | For every business code, a dedicated bank account needs to be set up. All payment methods need to be settled to the specific bank account. No other payments than the ones linked to transactions processed by Accounting as a Service are permitted on those accounts. To get access to the bank statements, we need to set up an EBICS connection with your bank. |
| Acquirer | Please fill in all relevant data of your card acquirer. You will get those usually from your account manager during the onboarding process. If your acquirer provided different data, e.g. per card brand, please fill-in all of them. If you are using a collecting PSP who is providing card payments as well, please leave these columns blank, but fill out the Collecting PSP area. |
| Collecting PSP | If you are going to work with a collecting PSP, please fill in all relevant data in the relevant columns. Please note that if you are using Accounting as a Service in the collecting PSP model, you don't need to fill anything here. |
| Payment Provider 1-n | If you have direct contracts with one or more payment providers (e.g. PayPal), please fill in the relevant data in the corresponding columns. Please note that if you are using Afterpay, you don't need to fill anything for this method. |
| Risk Management Provider | If you are going to use a risk module, please fill in the relevant data in the corresponding columns. Please note that if you are going to use Accounting as a Service's own risk module, you need to integrate the risk management API in your checkout process. If you are going to use another provider, Accounting as a Service will only provide payment, dunning and collection information to this provider. You need to integrate the risk management providers API in your checkout process. |
IMPORTANT NOTE Please make sure that all payment methods to be supported settle to the indicated bank account of the related entity according to the information from this section of the application form and make sure that all the transactions processed by Accounting as a Service will be manged via this bank account.
Step 8: Invoices
The following information refers to the sheet "Step8 - Invoices".
In this section you can configure, if and how Accounting as a Service should generate invoices and how these should be distributed. You will also have to indicate the language(s), in which the invoices should be generated.
If you expect to have a high volume of invoices in reference to the open invoice as your form of payment method, you may want to integrate a paylink on your invoices as it enables your customers to pay convenient (e.g. via credit card or PayPal) after they have decided to keep the goods and not to return them.
Although the invoice template of Accounting as a Service is standardized. You can customize the elements as shown in the following illustration:
Please note, that Accounting as a Service will archive all generated documents. You can access those documents via a notification or the myAccounting GUI.
Step 9: Booking notifications
The following information refers to the sheet "Step9 - Booking notifications".
This section handles the configuration of Accounting as a Service with regard to various booking notifications. Accounting as a Service can send notifications by email to your customers using different languages. By default, German and English notifications are supported, but more languages are available on request.
All notifications are based on templates with predefined values for all text elements. If you require additional languages and/or you need to have custom values for some text elements, please get in touch. For more information about the existing text elements and their predefined values, please refer to the list of notification related text elements.
Below you can find a sample notification generated by Accounting as a Service concerning the notification type "Payment".
Please note, that Accounting as a Service will archive all generated documents. You can access those documents via a notification or the myAccounting GUI.
Step 10: Month-end reporting
The following information refers to the sheet "Step10 - Month-end reporting".
You can configure how to consume the Accounting as a Service month-end reporting (general ledger balances). To learn about the different options, check out the section about the month-end closing handling, as described in the accounting module.
Helpful hints
Some hints about the information requested in the scope of this process step:
| Field | Additional notes |
|---|---|
| Format Option | Please configure which option you want to use |
| Transfer Option | Please configure how you want to receive your month-end closing files |
| Chart of Accounts | You can either select the standard chart of accounts (=G/L account numbers) or define alternative G/L account numbers. If the second case applies, you need to provide alternative account numbers, which we will then upload in Accounting as a Service for you. Please reach out to us to align on the details. |
Step 11: Reporting portal user
The following information refers to the sheet "Step11 - Reporting portal user".
Accounting as a Service provides a wide variety of reports to monitor and analyse your business. To give access to the reporting portal, you will have to provide the name and email address for all relevant team members of your organization. Usually these members are in the role of managers, controllers or CFOs.
Access will be available via web-portal as well as via app. Further details about how to use and/or install will be provided together with the access credentials.
Below you can find samples of the reporting made available via the Accounting as a Service Reporting Portal.
Step 12: Accounting as a Service user
The following information refers to the sheet "Step12 - Accounting as a Service user".
Accounting as a Service provides a dedicated user interface to look up your customer's accounts, including the option to set dunning locks and to issue goodwill credits. To provide your team with access to Accounting as a Service, you need to provide the name and email address of the team members in charge. Usually these members are customer service employees.
Helpful hints
You can choose between the following roles:
| Role | Additional notes |
|---|---|
| Read Only | This role enables the user to receive read access to the customer app, the customer account app, the dunning blocks app and the goodwill credits app as well as the documents app. The user can overview open and closed invoices and the total balance of an account. In the documents app the user can find all customer documents, which have been created by Accounting as a Service (invoices, dunning letters, etc.). |
| Basic | In addition to the read only role, the basic role also enables master data changes. |
| Basic + | On top of the basic role, the user is allowed to set and delete dunning blocks. |
| Agent | In addition to the basic+ role, the agent role enables the user to create goodwill credits for the whole invoice or only for one or more items (within dedicated limits (in EUR): day: 3.000, week: 10.000, position: 300) |
| Teamlead | In addition to the agent role, the team lead role enables the user to create goodwill credits for the whole invoice or only for one or more items (within dedicated limits (in EUR): day: 5.000, week: 24.500, position: 300) |
Sample screenshots from Accounting as a Service:
Step 13: Ticket system user
The following information refers to the sheet "Step13 - Ticket system user".
To raise operational 2nd level support tickets, Accounting as a Service provides a ticket system as part of its support. An example use case could be a question about a declined refund or a missing payment. To provide your team with access to the ticket system, you need to provide the name and email address of the relevant team members from your organization. Usually these members are customer service employees.