Automating payment file generation shouldn't mean giving up control. VEU (Verteilte Elektronische Unterschrift, distributed electronic signature) is the EBICS mechanism that keeps explicit human validation on every payment, without falling back to manual re-entry on a bank portal.

What VEU is, and why EBICS requires it on certain orders

VEU is a multi-person signature mechanism built into the EBICS protocol: a bank order (transfer, direct debit) may require one or more signatures before it's actually sent to the bank for execution. Many banks require this workflow once an amount crosses a threshold, or for certain sensitive order types — a bank requirement, not a software option.

The approval workflow, step by step

A payment generated from an approved invoice in Sage Intacct first lands in a signature queue. The authorized signatory or signatories (based on rules set by the company and its bank — single signature, or dual signature above a certain amount) validate or reject the payment from their own space, never needing to re-enter the order. Once signed by the required number of people, the order is sent to the bank for execution.

eIDAS compliance: what it legally guarantees

The European eIDAS regulation governs the legal validity of electronic signatures. VEU relies on each signatory's EBICS certificates to authenticate the signature, giving it evidentiary value equivalent to a physical signature in the context of professional banking exchanges — the signatory's identity and the integrity of the signed order can be verified after the fact.

Audit trail: what gets tracked for every payment

Every step of the workflow is timestamped and attributed by name: who initiated the payment, who signed it (and when), whether a rejection occurred and by whom. This traceability directly addresses internal and external audit requirements on payment workflows — a point often checked during an ISO 27001 audit or a statutory auditor's review of the treasury process.

Setting it up in Arkaio

The signature workflow configuration follows the rules already defined by your bank for your EBICS subscriber (number of required signatures, any thresholds): Arkaio doesn't reinvent the banking workflow, it surfaces it clearly from within Sage Intacct, with notifications to the relevant signatories as soon as a payment is awaiting their validation.

In summary

VEU enables multi-person human validation without manually re-entering payments
eIDAS-compliant: the electronic signature carries legal value equivalent to a physical signature
Every step (initiation, signature, rejection) is timestamped and attributed by name
The workflow follows the rules set by your bank, surfaced directly from Sage Intacct