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This profile describes a process comprising an electronic invoice and, potentially, an electronic credit note. It is intended for situations where invoicing is electronic but where matching of the invoice to other electronic documents may not be practicable. As a result, the invoice and credit note are self-contained with respect to legal and fiscal requirements.

It is not a primary objective of this profile to facilitate automatic order matching and/or cost allocation; the profile assumes limited or no procurement data content and limited or no aligned and synchronized identifiers in the system to match the transaction.

Large parts of the invoice may be expressed as text rather than identifiers and codes e.g. the invoice may contain items (goods or services) with item identifiers and items with free text description.

This profile can be used with little or no integration to ERP systems. It may be introduced with minimum advance exchange agreement if coding schemes are not used.

This profile may cover invoice factoring arrangements.

Business benefits

Customer Party

• Reduced requirement for manual intervention; leads to fewer human keying errors.
• Automatic invoice validation.
• Potential for systematic application of invoice control.
• Resource redeployment.

• Faster invoice transfers.
• Acknowledgement of invoice receipt (at technical level).
• Potential for shortened payment cycle and improved cash flow.

Business documents

• Invoice
• Credit Note

Business scenarios

• Invoice accepted.
• Invoice rejected.
• Resolution with supplementary invoice.
• Resolution with credit note.

Business activities

• Supplier's accounting party creates and sends an invoice to customer's accounting party.
• Customer's accounting party receives and processes the invoice.
• Customer's accounting party accepts or rejects invoice in full. Acceptance of the invoice initiates a payment process. Rejection leads to the customer's accounting party notifying the customer's accounting party of the discrepancy.
• Implied, payment is external to this profile.
• The supplier's accounting party receives and processes the manual notification from the customer's accounting party.
• If the notification has (correctly) identified an undercharge, the supplier's accounting party creates and sends a second invoice to the customer's accounting party.
• If the notification has (correctly) identified an overcharge, the supplier's accounting party creates and sends a credit note to the customer's accounting party.
• Customer's accounting party receives and processes the second invoice. If the sum of the first and the second invoice equals the correct amount, payment is initiated.
• Customer's accounting party receives and processes the credit note. If the sum of the invoice and the credit note equals the correct amount, payment is initiated.