Has your business recently begun operating through the internet?
Well, it’s not a huge ask for an organisation to go online in 2022. However, handling massive work (especially in the behind-the-scenes department) can be difficult for anyone.
Think about it.
Serving your services online means that you have to –
● Integrate your whole organisational infrastructure in an internet-based format.
● Install online payment tools and implement them in your system.
● Have a website and use it for marketing purposes.
… and so on.
In addition to these, you’ll also need to create an electronic invoicing infrastructure to improve your payment department even more. And that’s where SAP E-invoicing can come in handy.
Let’s keep reading to know more about it.
What is SAP E-invoicing?
Electronic invoicing, otherwise known as E-invoicing, is about managing your organisation’s invoicing system. It can also simplify the entire process to let the compliance documents and invoice work together to offer a more satisfactory end result.
By digitising your invoice data and matching it against the received purchase orders, contracts, and good receipts, SAP E-invoicing lowers the risk of invoicing exceptions and errors.
When e-invoices get transmitted over a digital organisational network and programmed with relevant document data and business regulations – they can be assessed and authenticated automatically before posting for payment. And as digital information is more effortlessly viewed across different systems, e-invoicing can make it easier to –
● Facilitate collaboration within the company and amongst various trading partners.
● Managing cumbersome compliance duties from an easy-to-access dashboard.
All in all, it can make your job of making or receiving a payment much easier and more structured. It is integrated with SAP as well. So, if you are already using an SAP solution, you can easily take care of everything through the same.
How to Customise SAP E-invoice?
Yes, you can easily customise your e-invoice in SAP pretty comfortably. Here’s what you need to do to create the same –
● At first, you’ll need to click on “Customizing” and tap on Financial Accounting (New). Then, go under “Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable” and click on Business transactions.
● Now, go to “Country-specific Settings,” tap on wherever your company is located directly, and click “Electronic Invoicing.”
● Then, you change the settings by following the below-mentioned activities –
● In the “Maintain Editing and…” activity, you’ll be able to prevent some or all electronic invoices from being deleted or edited from the journal.
● In the “Maintain Deadlines” activity, you can specify a particular deadline for any kind of electronic invoice status change, which is relevant for outgoing or incoming invoices. If the status hasn’t changed before setting the deadline, the invoice will be presented as “out of date.”
● In the “Maintain Incoming…” section, you can specify a rule to link the accounting documents automatically. It can be done during the posting session for incoming electronic invoices. You’ll also be able to select the dates relevant to any other invoice-matching rule.
There’s another way that can be used to customise your SAP e-invoice. Here’s what you need to do in this regard –
● In the beginning, you’ll need to tap on Financial Accounting (New) again. Now, go under “Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable” again and click on “Business Transactions.”
● Again set your country and click on “Automatic Registration of Outgoing Invoices.” It can help you register the outgoing invoices within the Invoice Journal.
● Additionally, you can also define if you wish the system to create electronic invoices automatically. In this case, you must create a new entry within the IJ (Invoice Journal) first. In order to do so, you will need to click on the Create XML checkbox.
How Can the Invoice be Sent?
Usually, most organisations employ the electronic invoicing portal to transfer the XML-based files as the medium for invoice exchange. It’s done in a UBL format. This exchange involves the participation of a vendor, a customer, and a certified integration provider.
Once the vendor and the customer have registered themselves, they can start to receive and send electronic invoices through –
1: Integration.
Companies with excellent IT capacity can implement and integrate their system with the MoF (Ministry of Finance) alongside the determined standards. Organisations can apply for system integration after a period of utilisation of the web portal too.
2: Portal.
If your organisation has an insufficient IT or information technology capacity, be sure to opt for the portal. It provides a fundamental e-invoicing application functionality and, hence, can be used by almost anyone. If you have registered, you can log into your account in the portal and start to receive and send invoices.
What are the Prerequisites?
At first, you will need to register yourself for a user account with the TRA. Besides that, you must also ensure that you have performed the below-mentioned settings properly –
● Determine the vendor and customer relevance for e-invoicing.
● Determine the core SD document relevance.
● Mapped SAP tax codes to tax type codes.
● Determine FI document relevance to perform e-invoicing.
● Define RFC destination (it’ll be relevant for only MM and SD).
● Additionally, you can also implement a BAdl file to fill up all of the other optional fields.
That’s all, really.
The Bottom Line
SAP e-invoicing is an excellent segment of SAP solutions that can help you with –
● Accelerate the period of client payments.
● The account reconciliation procedure will become much easier too.
● Greater customer satisfaction due to the excellent customisation.
● It’s much better and more secure than paper billing. It can also prevent the interception of document presentations online.
Finally, although SAP e-invoicing may seem a little expensive initially, it can reduce your overall expense later on. So, it might be better to subscribe to SAP and integrate it within your organisation. Opt for a consulting service if you are seeking any assistance.
