Guidelines for SG Peppol BIS Billing v3

The use of references in the invoice is a key mechanism for the buyer to automate the approval and matching process. With proper software, much of the tedious job of manual business controls and verification can be rationalized with none or a minimum of manual intervention.

An invoice must contain BT-10 Buyer reference or BT-13 Purchase order reference, or both. These business terms are designated, by the buyer, to be unique within the organisational unit identified by the buyer’s PEPPOL-ID. They are provided to the supplier in the order or contract, or at time of purchase, to be returned in the invoice with the purpose of automating internal forwarding of invoices, or matching invoice-to-order, in the buyer’s system.

The invoice may refer to only one order, i.e. at most one BT-13 Purchase order reference may be present in the invoice. If BT-13 is present, each invoice line may refer to one order line by means of BT-132 Referenced purchase order line reference. Presence of BT-13 does however not imply that line level referencing always has to be provided. Also, be mindful of the fact that order line and invoice line do not always have a one-to-one relation.

An invoiced object is a service or commodity that gives raise to recurring invoicing, based on consumption per period. The standard EN16931 mentions subscriptions, meter readings (e.g. for energy or telephony), vehicle lease, and such like, as candidates for invoiced objects; as a contrast, a document attached to an invoice is not regarded as an invoiced object. The buyer may set up a registry of invoiced objects, where each entry –i.e. each invoiced object–is associated with pre-defined criteria or parameters representing the expected consumption pattern, this will then allow for automatic validation of spending.

BT-18 Invoiced object identifier and BT-128 Invoice line object identifier are used to refer to invoiced objects: the former applies for the invoice as a whole while the latter applies to an individual invoice line. BT-18 and BT-128 may be used in combination. BT-18 is overruled on a line where BT-128 is present. The object identifiers are designated by the supplier, so a mechanism is needed to guarantee unique matching in the buyer’s system. It is advisable to use the optional scheme identifier to help identifying the type of invoiced object.

BT-12 Contract reference refers to a framework agreement or other kind of contract forming the basis for the supply being invoiced. The invoice can refer to at most one contract. It is expected that the buyer controls the unicity of references used to identify the contracts.

If instructed in advance the seller can provide, in the invoice, a text string to be used when booking the invoice into buyer’s accounts. This information can be for the invoice as a whole (BT-19 Buyer accounting reference), or for individual an invoice line (BT-133 Invoice line Buyer accounting reference), or a combination of them.

If instructed in advance the seller can associate the invoice to a project by means of BT-11 Project reference, it will then apply to the whole invoice.

BT-16 Despatch advice reference is the supplier’s reference to a despatch advice that may be used to reconciliate the invoice with the goods despatched and (hopefully) received. The invoice can refer to at most one despatch advice.

BT-122 Supporting document reference is a general-purpose reference to a document substantiating claims in the invoice. When used in this specific context, the referenced document is expected to be known by both seller and buyer, nevertheless it is adviced that BT-122 should be accompanied by BT-123 Supporting document description to clarify the subject matter of the document.

BT-14 Sales order reference is the seller’s reference to the order (corresponding to the buyer’s BT-13 Purchase order reference). The business term may have been given in a response to the order. The purpose for including it in the invoice is to simplify the seller’s tracing of the order in case queries should arise as the buyer processes the invoice.

Note–The UBL mapping of BT-17 to OriginatorDocumentReference implies reference to the originating tender document, it is not to be understood as reference to the originator or the originator’s internal requisition leading to the invoice.

In case the buyer during the delivery process has responded to the seller with a message/notification that the goods were received, then this element can be used to refer to this message/notification