Getting Ready for IVL OptiE-Invoice Addon

The New Year brings in New Challenges and Hope. Technology is evolving at a rapid pace and adaptation is falling behind. Top Management is busy firefighting the Economic Slow Down, Compliance and regulation changes, Supply and Demand challenges, and Customer Service expectations.

E-Invoice had been the topic of Interest to the business community since the past few months and it is not going to end sometime soon! The Roll out of GST was a Learning curve for most of us and we all expect that this time around it would be a much Smoother affair. We have to wait and watch for the outcome when we finally Go-Live. At Least this time around the Change Management and Communication has been identified as an important pillar in this transformation journey. The agencies have come up with elaborate awareness and communication strategies. The Rollout plan with the optional and mandatory Cut off deadlines isa welcome change from the hurried implementation.

The Optional Trial period for large enterprises starts from 1st January 2020. Many of the Large Enterprises use SAP Application for their Finance and billing Functions. IVL has been a SAP Add On Development partner since the past several years. Our SAP Add on for EXIM, GST and EWB is being used by many of the large Enterprises.
Companies using SAP for Finance and billing functions are very well ready for the Quick adoption of E-invoice. The API for IRN generation has already been released. The architecture and approach would be similar to EWB generation using API released by GSTN. In the case of Tax payers with Turnover >500Cr there is an option to connect to the IRP directly and not via a GSP.

• Nominate a Project manager to start studying the various product options available in the market. As a SAP customer  some of the factors which you should consider while evaluating any solution are:
• Data Security
• Connectivity speed
• Manual Activities involved in the process
• Long term support prospect
• Any connectivity costs
• Maintenance and support costs
• Product features and value Add’s
• Automation possibility
• Integration with GST / EWB solution.
• Would you like to connect to the IRP directly or via your GSP portal? The Network administrator should make the necessary configuration in the firewall to allow access to the GSTN portal. The public key and certificate needs to be installed in your SAP server for accessing the GSTN API securely.
• If as a company policy you are using any middleware to access external portal then the same should be informed to the E-invoicing solution provider so that they can plan the integration accordingly.
• How would you like to save the QR code returned by the IRP. Do you want to save the QR code as a image file or would you like to save it as binary data in SAP tables.
• Check if you Customer master has the correct contact Email id to be printed on your invoice. As you are aware a signed json file would be emailed to the Customer contact email id.
• Would you like to email the E-invoice to your customer’s directly? In this case you will have to make the provisions in your E-invoice program.
• How would you like to manage the Inbound E-invoice. Do you want to automate the inbound invoice process? Remember that E-invoice would be mandatory only for certain suppliers who have a turnover of over 100Cr. The Smaller Suppliers would continue to send their invoice in the current format. So remember not to change your inbound process to only cater for E-invoice.
• Do you want to embed the QR code in your invoice printouts?  Identify the Smart form / SAPScript / Adobe Form in which you want to embed the QR code.
• Make a list of all Accounting document type and the company code for which you would like to generate E Invoice.
• Make a list of all sales billing Document type for which you would like to generate E-invoice.
• Identify the document type for credit note.
• Identify the document type for debit notes.
• Make a list of your tax codes for E invoice. This is required for invoices created directly in FI.
• Provide a list of the tax GL accounts for easy reference and selection.
• How would you like to track the E Invoice generated for your SAP invoice? Identify the field which will be used to save the invoice / E-invoice status in the SAP table.
• Discuss and decide if you would like to generate E invoice in a dialog process or would you like to generate E-invoice in the background without manual intervention. Remember that once an invoice is submitted to IRP it cannot be changed. There is a Cancel option and that too within 24 hours. Any change to the invoice has to be made in the GSTN annexure filling. You can probably schedule a background job to select invoice at the end of a day and post to IRP.
• Verify the GSTIN of your Customers and suppliers in the customer / vendor master records. This will eliminate any error returned by IRP.