EDI Electronic invoicing VICS
Electronic invoicing is usually requested by the buying organization shortly after the implementation of electronic purchase orders. Since each buying organization will have specific requirements that must be met for this transaction, the buyer should provide a copy of their implementation guide to the supplier for this transaction.
Electronic invoicing is an extract process. The assumption is that the process for automatically generating invoices on paper is in fact an automated procedure. This being the case, the implementation of an EDI invoice becomes a matter of comparing what your current system produces versus what is required by the buyer’s implementation guide. Once the differences are identified, this information becomes the basis for designing the invoice bridge system. It should be noted that the current invoice system has to be aware of those buyers requiring an electronic invoice and those that require a paper invoice.
As in most supplier EDI implementations, care should be taken to design the invoice bridge with multiple buyers in mind; an extract should not be designed for each buying organization. It should be noted that it is possible for a buyer’s implementation of the electronic invoice to require information that previously was not required. These differences may necessitate the extraction of additional information from the purchase order file or perhaps another file.
The majority of the impact to a supplier’s organization will center around normal control procedures which for the most part are manual in nature. Additional system features may be required of your existing invoice system in order to view invoices that exist only in an electronic medium, as well as, to possibly correct errors caused by shipping discrepancies.
When developing any additional system requirements, the organization should remember that through the use of a consolidated invoice, a supplier may “batch” several invoices together into one Invoice (810) to support a single or multiple purchase order for the buyer. Care should be taken to separate invoices and perform the same system processing (receiving and reconciliation functions) for all included invoices. Aside from traditional reporting requirements necessary for control, the enterprise must protect the audit requirements of this document.
To learn more about EDI and become a CEDIAP® (Certified EDI Academy Professional), please visit our course schedule page.