System Integration Consultant, UK

Payments in and out: feeds, BACS, Direct Debit and cards

Money moving through a UK business usually touches several channels, each with its own format and timing. The integration design has to cover all of them, not just the bank feed:

• Bank statement feeds. Many finance systems take transactions through Open Banking connections or a bank-specific feed. I check what data each feed carries, how far back it reaches and what happens when consent needs renewing, because a lapsed connection is a quiet way to lose a week of transactions.
• BACS supplier payments. The ERP produces a payment file, which is uploaded to the bank or a bureau. I specify the file layout your bank expects, the approval steps before upload and how rejected items return to the ledger.
• Direct Debit collections. Recurring customers pay through mandates managed by a bureau or collection provider. Mandate status, collection schedules, failed collections and indemnity claims all need a route back to the customer account.
• Card and online payments. Gateways settle in batches net of fees and refunds, so the design splits each payout into sales, charges and adjustments before matching it to the bank deposit.

Supplier bank detail changes get their own control, because altered remittance details are a familiar route for payment fraud. I specify who may change them, how a change is verified and where it is logged. Your bank and finance lead confirm the final arrangements, and each file format is tested with the bank before go-live.

VAT returns and the digital links between systems

Making Tax Digital changed how VAT records move. In broad terms, VAT-registered businesses keep digital records and submit returns through compatible software, and data passing between pieces of software is expected to move by digital links rather than by retyping. Your accountant or tax advisor decides what applies to you and confirms the details. Integration design is where those expectations become concrete.

I trace the path a VAT figure takes, from a sales invoice or an online order to the return:

• Does the online shop or marketplace pass each sale with its VAT treatment, or does someone summarize it in a spreadsheet?
• Do purchase invoices arrive from a capture tool with VAT coded consistently?
• If several entities or systems feed one return, how are the figures combined?
• Is the return filed from the finance system or through bridging software, and how does that software receive the numbers?

Each manual hop is listed with a proposed digital alternative, ranked by effort and risk, for your accountant to review. The same exercise usually improves month-end, because it exposes the points where figures are copied by hand. Detailed VAT configuration in specific products is covered on platform pages such as Zoho Books UK and Odoo Accounting UK; this page is about the connections between systems.

Payroll, retailer EDI, couriers and EU shipments

A few more connections appear in many UK designs, each with its own quirks:

• Payroll. Payroll normally stays in specialist software that sends real-time submissions to HMRC, and the ERP receives a journal mapped to departments, cost centers or projects, along with pension and other deductions. I specify the mapping and a check for new pay elements that have no destination yet.
• Retailer EDI. Supplying a supermarket or large retailer often means orders, delivery notes, invoices and deductions or claims arriving electronically through an EDI provider. Deductions need their own matching route, or receivables fill up with small unexplained differences.
• Online channels. Shopify, WooCommerce and Amazon send orders, refunds and settlement reports. I map SKUs, bundles and returns, and decide whether each order posts individually or as a summary.
• Couriers. Shipping platforms need addresses, weights and service levels from the ERP and return tracking numbers and costs.
• EU shipments. Customs declarations are usually made by an agent or broker, who needs commodity codes, origin, values and Incoterms from your system. I specify that extract; the agent and your advisor own the declarations themselves.

Some public sector buyers invoice and receive invoices through Peppol. If that applies to you, I add the access point connection to the design. For distribution-heavy firms, the UK distribution ERP page covers the wider process.

Connector, middleware or custom build

Most UK integration landscapes end up with a mix of methods. The decision is made for each flow, considering volume, timing, how unusual the business rules are and who will look after it later:

Every option has to meet the same controls: validation before writing, limited retries, protection against duplicates when a message repeats, errors routed to a named person and a daily comparison of counts and totals between systems. I test native connectors against real scenarios, such as a partial refund or a multi-site stock movement, before recommending them. The broader thinking is on my ERP integration page.

Roles, testing and ownership after go-live

Integration work slips when everyone assumes someone else owns a flow. I agree the division at the start and write it into the plan:

• My responsibilities: defining requirements and data ownership, writing mappings, choosing methods, preparing test scripts, checking what was built against what was specified, lining up tests with banks, bureaus, EDI providers and couriers, and confirming readiness for go-live.
• Developers or the partner: building and deploying connectors, middleware flows and custom code, documenting them, and fixing defects found in testing.
• Your team: sign-off of each flow, reconciliations during the parallel run and daily ownership once live.

Testing follows complete business scenarios: an online order dispatched by courier, refunded in part, settled by the gateway, matched to the bank and reflected in the VAT data. Cutover runs flow by flow, ideally aligned with a VAT period boundary, with closer monitoring for the first weeks of live use.

Delivery is remote, with working sessions in UK hours and on-site visits only by arrangement. For the customer-facing side, see my CRM consultant UK page; for wider ERP advice, the UK ERP consultant page and the United Kingdom hub. The general approach is on system integration.