Electronic invoicing (EDI)

EDI, or electronic data interchange, is the inter-company communication of business documents, such as purchase orders and invoices, in a standard format. Sending documents according to an EDI standard ensures that the machine receiving the message can interpret the information correctly. Various EDI file formats exist and are available depending on your company’s country.

EDI feature enables automating the administration between companies and might also be required by some governments for fiscal control or to facilitate the administration.

Electronic invoicing of your documents such as customer invoices, credit notes or vendor bills is one of the application of EDI.

Flectra supports, among others, the following formats.

Format Name

Applicability

Factur-X (PDF/A-3)

For French and German companies

Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 (UBL)

For companies whose countries are part of the EAS list

E-FFF

For Belgian companies

XRechnung (UBL)

For German companies

Fattura PA (IT)

For Italian companies

CFDI (4.0)

For Mexican companies

Peru UBL 2.1

For Peruvian companies

SII IVA Llevanza de libros registro (ES)

For Spanish companies

UBL 2.1 (Columbia)

For Colombian companies

Egyptian Tax Authority

For Egyptian companies

E-Invoice (IN)

For Indian companies

NLCIUS (Netherlands)

For Dutch companies

EHF 3.0

For Norwegian companies

A-NZ BIS Billing 3.0

For Australian/New Zealand companies

Configuration

Go to Accounting ‣ Configuration ‣ Journals ‣ Customer Invoices ‣ Advanced Settings ‣ Electronic Invoicing and enable the formats you need for this journal.

Select the EDI format you need

Once an electronic invoicing format is enabled, XML documents are generated when clicking on Confirm in documents such as invoices, credit notes, etc. These documents are either visible in the attachment section, or embedded in the PDF.

Note

  • For E-FFF, the xml file only appears after having generated the PDF (Print or Send & Print button), since the PDF needs to be embedded inside the xml.

  • Every PDF generated from Flectra contains a Factur-X XML file (for interoperability purpose). For German and French companies, the option Factur-X (PDF/A-3) in addition enables validation checks on the invoice and generates a PDF/A-3 compliant file, required by plaftorms like Chorus Pro.

  • The formats available depend on the country registered in your company’s General Information.

  • Flectra supports the Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 format that can be used via existing access points.

Add new formats to a database created before July 2022

If your database was created before July 2022 and you wish to use one of the formats available from July 2022, you have to install the module Import/Export electronic invoices with UBL/CII (module’s technical name: account_edi_ubl_cii) and your country-specific module.

Example

If you want to use the Belgian format E-FFF in a database created prior to July 2022, you need to install:

Name

Technical name

Belgium - E-Invoicing (UBL 2.0, e-fff)

l10n_be_edi

Import/Export electronic invoices with UBL/CII

account_edi_ubl_cii

Note

Once the new module is installed, UBL 2.0 and UBL 2.1 formats no longer appear in the journal since UBL BIS Billing 3.0 is available and more widely supported.