Often in this blog on Latin America, we discuss the mandates and what companies have to do in order to stay in compliance and avoid fines. However, there are benefits to the Latin American model for corporations, not just governments. Process efficiency around the MIRO/MIGO processes in SAP is always a conversation that comes about during discussions of inbound processing. This process flow is often unique to organizations who have specific terminology or business practices; however, country e-Invoicing legislation, especially in Brazil and Mexico open up new possibilities that could not have been achieved previously.
The standardization of the invoice format by the government in Brazil is the key to the rise of this opportunity. Because the Brazilian government decided to add the PO number and line item information to the invoice, organizations have a unique possibility to accelerate and simplify their MIRO/MIGO processing. Remember, that all of your suppliers must make the XML available to your organization. This is often done via email in Brazil, but it can also be in the form of a direct connect communication protocol such as AS2, SFTP or a Web Service. Also, remember that this XML invoice must be approved by the government and its paper representation (DANFe) must be on the truck prior to shipment. This helps to ensure two things:
- What is on the invoice will match what is on the truck (of course there can be mistakes on product codes or breakage during transportation) which is where the return process and correction notices come into play.
- Your AP team will have the invoice prior to the goods actually arriving
- With the new "Eventos" created, if you acknowledge the acceptance of an NFe and that the goods were received as documented -- a supplier can not cancel the NFe ensuring the "Okay to Deduct" status on the inbound invoice
Many global organizations are taking advantage of this Brazil benefit, by implementing SAP Templates for Brazil Nota Fiscal MIRO/MIGO processing. This type of solution:
- Provides a collection mechanism for all supplier invoices regardless of communication protocol
- Provides the ability to parse out the XML inbound Nota Fiscal into a manageable view inside of SAP with one click access to the XML and PDF
- Provides automatic fiscal compliance to ensure it is a government approved and valid invoice
- Provides automatic comparison to meta data such as vendor master to see if a supplier exists and match to the Purchase Order information to ensure pricing and taxes are as expected
- Provide single scan at the warehouse to post goods receipt
- Provide one click payment release
Because of the detailed information available, organizations operating in Brazil should be looking at how to simplify their receiving, returns, and payables processing.
