Keeping Up with E-Invoices

Always up to date with e-invoices

The e-invoice standard has been in development for many years and has been actively used since 2020 in the form of XRechnung. With the extension of the e-invoice obligation to the B2B sector since the beginning of this year, significantly more companies are now working with the new electronic invoice formats. This is giving rise to new questions and challenges in everyday business.

We accompany numerous companies on this journey and keep our software constantly up to date so as to make handling e-invoices as easy as possible for our customers.

Embedding and attaching proof of activity and more

Particularly in the service sector, it is common practice to attach proof of activity or similar supporting documents to invoices. At the outset, directly inserting such records into electronic invoices was problematic, since the widely used ZUGFeRD standard in particular only allows PDF/A-compliant documents that exclude subsequent additions.

In order to still offer our customers maximum flexibility, we have extended teamspace accordingly: proof of activity, cost statements and further documents can not only be attached as separate files but also integrated directly into the ZUGFeRD or XRechnung file.

In the system, the option “Merge (Validation)” is available to you within the document. In contrast to the “Merge (Dispatch)” function, the “merging” here already takes place during the validation of the invoice. This way you also fulfil the requirements of customers who only accept a single file as an incoming invoice.

In addition, you can of course also include further reference documents or invoice-supporting materials in your e-invoices. These can be placed either before or after the PDF and are also embedded as attachments in both the ZUGFeRD and the XRechnung format.

Improved processing of incoming e-invoices

We have also further optimised the processing of incoming e-invoices. Attached documents are automatically stored in the file tab of the incoming invoice.

They are displayed there as reference documents and are thus directly available during the invoice review. This not only makes the review easier, but also ensures complete and well-documented storage of all relevant documents.

Support for Global Identifiers

Global Identifiers offer a standardised way to uniquely identify organisations and other entities worldwide. They are based on the ISO/IEC standard 17 6523 and can also be used in e-invoices.

A Global Identifier consists of a unique number for identifying the organisation and a code that designates the respective identification scheme. Example: The ID 992-90009-96 identifies Deutsche Bahn within the scheme “Leitweg ID” with the scheme code 0204.

In addition to the Leitweg ID, there are a number of other schemes that identify organisations or items for a specific application purpose, e.g. IOTA, BPI or the Amazon Unique Identification Scheme (ASIN). These identifiers can be stored in teamspace both for items and for organisations and automatically transferred to e-invoices.

Further improvements and outlook

In addition to the extensions mentioned, we have made numerous further optimisations and bug fixes in order to continue increasing the acceptance rate of e-invoices and to make the experience as convenient as possible for our customers. Especially in combination with our DATEV interface, e-invoices offer you maximum convenience with minimal effort. We will of course remain at the cutting edge in future so that you are always perfectly equipped for all requirements relating to e-invoices.

If you have questions or individual requirements, our consulting team is always happy to help.