1. Order Management
  2. Billing and Invoices
  3. Electronic Invoicing
  4. Electronic Invoicing Overview

Electronic Invoicing Overview

The Electronic Invoicing SuiteApp enables you to create and use electronic documents (e-documents) in XML or JSON, for your business. The use of XML or JSON e-documents has become a standard for exchanging business information in many countries. E-documents can help you comply with legal requirements in your country, or to automate your order-to-cash and purchase-to-payment processes. By using e-documents, your company, customers, vendors, tax agencies or government regulatory bodies, can exchange information about business transactions electronically using standard data format.

The Electronic Invoicing SuiteApp supports outbound and inbound processing of e-documents. Outbound e-document processing involves generating XML or JSON e-documents from supported NetSuite transactions, and then sending the XML or JSON e-documents to your customers, vendors and tax agencies. On the other hand, inbound e-document processing involves receiving XML e-documents from your vendors and then converting the XML e-documents into NetSuite transaction records. Both inbound and outbound e-documents use templates that you can create. Sample templates for inbound and outbound e-documents are included in the SuiteApp.

Important:

The Electronic Invoicing SuiteApp provides a framework for automating e-documents processing. It does not include native support for any country-specific requirements or e-document standards. But you can create custom country-specific e-document templates and packages using the Electronic Invoicing SuiteApp.

The Electronic Invoicing SuiteApp enables you to track received, converted, generated and sent e-documents through an audit trail on the E-Document subtab of a transaction record.

The SuiteApp is available free of charge when used for a single country. To use e-documents across multiple countries, contact your NetSuite account representative to purchase a license. For more information, see Electronic Invoicing SuiteApp Availability and License Client.

The Electronic Invoicing SuiteApp also supports multiple languages that the NetSuite user interface can be displayed in. For more information, see Configuring Multiple Languages and Choosing a Language for Your NetSuite User Interface.

Outbound Electronic Invoicing

The Electronic Invoicing SuiteApp enables you to generate outbound XML or JSON e-documents from the following NetSuite transactions:

Generated e-documents can then be sent to your customers, vendors or tax agency, individually or in batches. The default sending method of the outbound electronic invoicing is through email. You can also create custom sending methods like SOAP web services or automate the sending of e-documents by deploying scripts. The electronic invoicing outbound process also supports e-document certification, by sending e-documents to a certification authority and then receiving the certified e-documents.

In general, the electronic invoicing outbound process is composed of the following steps:

  1. The administrator creates and sets up outbound e-document templates and sending methods:

    1. The outbound e-document template must contain the XML or JSON code and specify the supported transactions and the recipient subsidiaries. For more information, see Creating E-Document Templates and Multi-subsidiary Support in the Outbound Process.

    2. The sending method must specify the custom plug-in implementation, the supported transactions, the recipient subsidiaries, and if it will be used for certification. For more information, see Creating E-Document Sending Methods, E-Document Certification in the Outbound Process, and Multi-subsidiary Support in the Outbound Process.

  2. The administrator creates an e-document package, which specifies an e-document template and sending method. See Creating E-Document Packages. Users can assign the e-document package to customers or vendors. The transactions of that customer or vendor will apply the e-document template and sending method of the e-document package. For more information, see Assigning E-Document Packages to Customer or Vendor Records.

    Or, users can create or edit a transaction record, then select an e-document template and an e-document sending method. For more information, see Transactions and Processes Supported by the Electronic Invoicing SuiteApp and Selecting E-Document Packages, Templates and Sending Methods on Transactions.

  3. Users can generate the outbound e-documents of transactions with an associated e-document template and sending method. Outbound e-documents can be generated from the following transaction types:

    • Bill

    • Credit Memos

    • Cash Sales

    • Cash Refunds

    • Customer Payments

    • Estimates

    • Invoices

    • Item Fulfillment

    • Purchase Orders

    • Returns

    • Registered Custom Transaction Types

    • Transfer Order

    • Vendor Credit or Bill Credit

    See Generating and Regenerating E-Documents.

  4. Users can send generated e-documents to your customers, vendors or tax agency. For more information, see Sending and Resending E-Documents.

    If you need to certify the generated e-document, specify a certification sending method. Then, send the e-documents to the certification authority or tax agency. See E-Document Certification in the Outbound Process.

  5. Users can perform all the e-document processes by clicking the single Process E-Document button in a transaction , if the e-document template and sending method is configured. See Processing E-Documents Automatically for Individual Transactions

The following diagram shows the general process flow of outbound electronic invoicing in NetSuite.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

For more information about the process of generating and sending outbound e-documents, read the following topics:

Inbound Electronic Invoicing

You can receive inbound e-documents from your vendors, customers or government regulatory bodies. Inbound e-documents are received in NetSuite through email or SOAP web services, which are the supported inbound channels. You can also receive e-documents from portable file storage media or devices from your vendors. Then, you can manually upload to NetSuite the received XML e-documents, which you will subsequently convert into NetSuite transactions.

An inbound e-document template must be created to convert the received e-documents into supported NetSuite transactions. A sample inbound e-document template is included with the SuiteApp.

Here are a few examples:

The following diagram shows the general process flow of inbound electronic invoicing in NetSuite.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

For more information about the process of receiving and converting inbound e-documents, read the following topics:

Transactions and Processes Supported by the Electronic Invoicing SuiteApp

Inbound and outbound transaction types are better understood in the perspective of the NetSuite user, who can either be the vendor or the customer in the conduct of a transaction.

The following diagram illustrates scenarios where transaction types are transformed into other types in the perspective of the NetSuite user along the outbound and inbound e-document process.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Based on the diagram, the NetSuite user can either be a vendor or a customer, who can generate and send XML or JSON outbound e-documents or receive inbound XML e-documents using the Electronic Invoicing SuiteApp.

As the vendor (the party selling items or providing services), the NetSuite user can generate the XML or JSON e-document of an invoice, based on an initial purchase order sent by a customer. Likewise, the NetSuite user can generate the XML or JSON e-document of an item fulfillment, credit memo, or return authorization. Generated outbound XML or JSON e-documents can then be sent through email or web service to a customer or tax authority.

Outbound e-document generation for vendor bill is a special case, as it supports self-billing. This is useful if you want to charge your company in advance for goods or services acquired from a vendor, and then send the generated e-document of the bill to your vendor along with the payment.

As the customer (the party buying items or acquiring services), the NetSuite user can receive inbound XML e-documents from a vendor or tax authority through email or web service. After the inbound XML e-document is received in NetSuite, it can be converted into its corresponding transaction record. A vendor can send an e-document of an invoice or credit memo, which you can receive and convert into a vendor bill or vendor credit respectively. Similarly, customer can send an e-document of purchase order, which you can receive and convert into a sales order. Currently, only vendor bill, vendor credit and sales order are supported for inbound processing.

The following table lists the transaction types currently supported by outbound and inbound electronic invoicing.

Outbound

Inbound

Bill (for self-billing)

Bill

Credit Memo

 

Cash Refund

 

Cash Sale

 

Customer Payment

 

Invoice

 

Item fulfillment

 

Purchase Order

 

Return Authorization

 

Registered Custom Transaction Types

 

 

Sales Order

Transfer Order

 

Vendor Credit or Bill Credit

Vendor Credit or Bill Credit

Electronic Invoicing Preferences

The Electronic Invoicing Preferences page consists of parent, subsidiary, and role preferences that links to the account level and subsidiary level (for OneWorld Accounts) configurations. Administrators can update the preferences in:

Related Topics

Electronic Documents Dashboard SuiteApp Portlet

The Electronic Documents Dashboard SuiteApp Portlet displays the number of e-documents that are pending a process. Clicking the number under a process opens a results page with a list of e-documents pending a process, or the page for performing an e-document process.

For outbound e-document processing, the left column displays the number of:

For inbound e-document processing, the right column displays the number of:

E-document settings for administrator tasks can be accessed from the menu, Setup > E-Documents.

For more information about the e-documents portlet, see Granting Access Permission to the E-Documents Portlet and Displaying the E-Documents Portlet on the Home Page.

Customizations Supported by the Electronic Invoicing SuiteApp

The Electronic Invoicing SuiteApp is designed to support the following customizations:

Related Topics

General Notices