Technology has changed the way people used to make business. This can specifically be told for the businesses who have international markets to cater to with a large customer base. Business transformation with technology was once the matter of adopting automation only and people weren't viewing it from an efficiency perspective. But now the scenario is completely different. Automating any business process is now the need of the hour as without which you may be unintentionally pulling your business back into such cutthroat competition. Technology innovations helped businesses to look for various options when it comes to business automation. In other words, technology adoption is not only for automation but such automation helps businesses to gain a competitive advantage of added efficiency.
Accounting & Invoicing process is no exception in being automated. So now going an extra mile, we have some invoicing techniques which allow us to invoice our customers with the basic use of existing technology frameworks. It has multiple advantages but the major one is to make the invoicing process easy and paperless. This article further talks about one of the solutions developed with the Odoo framework where the customer can either pay from the link or know about the invoiced amount just by scanning the QR Code generated by the system. E-Invoicing is an initiative taken by the market leaders and technology product companies have taken it ahead by developing the ways in which we are now invoicing our customers electronically.
Odoo E-Invoicing for Saudi Arabia
In continuation to the introduction of this article, we have a solution that addresses the need for E-Invoicing for the Saudi Arabia market. This is an added functionality to the Sales & Invoicing modules of Odoo and offers some of the extra functions to allow a vendor to invoice their customers electronically. Let's see how the solution works and how it exactly helps in generating electronic invoices.
Why E-Invoicing?
There are many business processes that need to be governed and accounting & invoicing is one such process in any kind of business. There have been many loopholes & process gaps where fraudulent activities have been taking place. The need here is not only to have enterprise-level technology but also to govern the moves taken by the respective departments. So as it goes, having the common norms & regulations for invoicing your customers was a much-needed thing. ZATCA - Zakat, Tex & Customs Authority of KSA rolled out this regulation and is about to get started with its phase-wise implementation of e-Invoicing for VAT registered sellers. In the first phase starting on 04/December/21 sellers are to be ready with the E-Invoicing systems which should be conducting the invoicing process as per the norms defined by ZATCA. In the second phase of this roll-out (Scheduled to happen in January/2023) businesses would already have the systems in place but then would be asked to integrate their Invoicing Systems to the ZATCA’s portal for centralized governance & compliance. So the system integrators for such a huge E-Invoicing roll-out will need to develop it according to how the authority has defined it and so it should be that much integration-friendly to the system/portal used by the governing authorities / ZATCA.
So the idea here is to completely eliminate the process which can reduce the chances of possible frauds inside any organization. Also to note here that the scanned copy or photocopy of the invoice will not be considered as E-Invoice & credit/debit notes should just be added under the same document which is considered as an E-Invoice. Our Odoo E-Invoicing module is compliant with the regulations announced by ZATCA.
Functional Flow with ScreenShots
The functional flow of the system starts by creating the Sale Order. This definitely means that we are further going to create the Invoice and send it to the customer. That is through the common flow of the invoicing system but here in our case, the solution is more prepared in a way that the system follows all the defined norms of E-Invoicing and generates the QR Code on the Invoice. Also, it allows us to add Credit / Debit notes too.
Let's go through the process visually and check through how the system works. We are going to have a series of Screenshots taken from the working system with Odoo E-Invoicing for the Saudi Market.
Configuring Tax ID
Here we are configuring the Tax ID by going inside Settings >> Companies.
Creating Invoice
Upon confirming the Sale Order we will be creating an Invoice. E-Invoicing specific things will get automatically activated/shown upon confirming the Invoice. This will change a few things. This will create a new Tab called “QR Code” having a code that can be scanned. Also by clicking on the Print >> Invoice we can get the invoice printed with the QR Code too.
Generate QR Code
We always have an option to manually generate the QR Code. This code will also get displayed in a separately added tab in a confirmed Invoice.
Printed Invoice with QR.
This is how it looks when we print the Confirmed Invoice. Either we share the invoice by generating a payment link by going inside Actions >> Generate Payment Link. But it's necessary to have the QR code printed on the invoice so by printing the confirmed invoice, the file will be looking like this.
QR Scanning Results
And the final thing here is, what the customer will view after scanning the QR Code generated by the system.
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