Directive 2014/55/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 April 2014 on electronic invoicing for public contracts obliges all contracting authorities throughout Europe to be able to receive and process the resulting invoices electronically. In the course of this directive, the customer intends to create outgoing invoices generated in his SAP ERP 6.0 system in electronic form and send them customer-related.
Supplement
Within the SAP ERP system, the invoice data is accessed when the SD invoice is created. The resulting XML file is merged with the PDF invoice document into a PDF/A3 document and can then be sent electronically to the invoice recipient. The solution is implemented in the SAP system with ABAP. Another option for creating the XML file when creating the PDF invoice would be to use an INVOICE IDoc. This is created via message determination when the SD invoice is created. The XML file is generated via programming in the corresponding user exit and then linked to the PDF invoice.
Subject description
The format of the electronic invoice corresponds to the EN16931 standard for the creation of a hybrid invoice in the ZUGFeRD 2.0 format. A PDF/A3 document is generated which contains both the invoice as a PDF document and an XML file for automatic incorporation on the invoice recipient's side. The starting point for the database is the time of creation of the PDF invoice document, which is transferred into the specified XML structure. Sending invoices in electronic form eliminates the need to print and manually send invoices to the customer.