Electronic Invoicing

What is Electronic Invoicing?

The Mexico Tax Authority has introduced Comprobante Fiscal Digital por Internet (CFDI) Electronic invoicing to standardise the way business-to-business (B2B) invoices are reported to SAT (Servicio de Administración Tributaria). This ensures that all invoices are submitted to the SAT portal in a common format.

How does Electronic Invoicing work in Zoho Books?

Electronic Invoicing in Zoho Books is a simple and hassle-free process. Zoho Books has partnered with an authorized certification provider - Proveedores Autorizados de Certificación (PAC´S). Zoho Books helps you create invoices in the XML and PDF file format by including all the mandatory fields mentioned by SAT.

These invoices can be stamped to SAT at the click of a button. The SAT will then send a unique UUID number or Folio Fiscal to identify this invoice, along with a QR code. You can include these in your invoice and send it to customers. Zoho Books also provides you with the option to cancel CFDI if needed.

This guide will help you understand how you can use Zoho Books to stay compliant with Electronic Invoicing.

Set up Electronic Invoicing in Zoho Books

Setting up Electronic Invoicing in Zoho Books is a one-time step. Once you’ve completed the set up, you can start generating SAT compliant CFDIs. Let’s see how you can start creating electronic invoices in Zoho Books.

• Enable Electronic Invoicing
• Connect with PAC’S
• Configure User Permissions

Enable Electronic Invoicing

Here’s how you can enable Electronic Invoicing in Zoho Books:

• Log in to your Zoho Books organisation.
• Go to Settings and navigate to Preferences.
• Select Electronic Invoicing from the left menu.
• Enable the Electronic Invoicing in Zoho Books option.

Now Electronic Invoicing will be enabled for your organisation and you can proceed to connect with Proveedores Autorizados de Certificación (PAC´S).

Connect with the PAC’S

The Proveedores Autorizados de Certificación (PAC) is the authorized certification provider to which you need to send your invoice details.

To start Electronic Invoicing, you need to connect Zoho Books with the PAC’S, after which you can stamp invoices to the PAC’S easily.

Connecting to PAC’S

You will have to upload your Digital Seal Certificate connect with PAC’S. To do this:

• Upload your Certificate File and Private Key File.
• Enter your Digital Seal Password.
• Sign the manifesto by selecting the checkbox.
• Click Save.

You’ve now connected Zoho Books with PAC’S.

Configure User Permissions

Now that you’ve connected Zoho Books with PAC’S you can configure which of your organisation’s users should have Electronic Invoicing permissions. For example, you might only want the sales team to be able to stamp invoices to the portal and also cancel them if needed. In that case, you can provide this access only to the sales team.

To do this:

• Go to Settings and navigate to Users & Roles.
• Select the Roles tab on top of the page.
• Create a new role or edit an existing one.
• Scroll down to the Electronic Invoicing section.
• Mark the Stamp and Cancel Transactions option.
• Click Save.

Functions in Electronic Invoicing

We’ll learn about the various actions you’ll be able to perform in Zoho Books as part of Electronic Invoicing.

• Statuses of Electronic Invoicing in Zoho Books
• Create Invoices
• Stamp Invoices to the SAT
• Cancel Electronic-Invoices

Statuses of Electronic Invoicing in Zoho Books

Here are the various statuses related to Electronic Invoicing in Zoho Books.

Status	Description
Ready to Stamp	The transaction is yet to be stamped to the SAT for Electronic Invoicing.
Stamped	The transaction was stamped to the SAT successfully, and a QR code and UUID has been generated for it.
Stamping Initiated	The transactions are being stamped as part of a bulk stamp action.
Cancelled	The CFDI has been cancelled in both Zoho Books and the SAT. The UUID associated with it is no longer valid.
Marked as Cancelled	The CFDI has been marked as cancelled in Zoho Books. However, you’ll have to cancel it manually in the SAT portal to make the UUID invalid.
Failed	The transaction could not be stamped to the SAT.

The Electronic Invoicing system requires the following transactions to be stamped to the SAT. A UUID will have to be generated for each of these transactions:

• Invoices
• Credit Notes

Create Invoices

The SAT had mandated a set of fields that are required for an Electronic Invoice. Some of these must be entered while creating new invoices. The other mandatory fields, will be auto populated if you’ve already entered them in Zoho Books (e.g. Customers Name or Items details )

Here’s a list of the mandatory fields across all the applicable modules for Electronic Invoicing:

Module	Mandatory Fields
Items Creation	SAT item code, SAT unit code
Customers Creation	Tax regime, Business legal name
Invoice Creation	CFDI reference type, CFDI usage
Record Payment for Invoice	Payment Mode
Payment Received	Payment Mode
Recurring Invoice	CFDI and Payment Mode
Credit Note	CFDI reference type, CFDI usage

The other mandatory fields depends upon the supplier’s business.

Stamp Invoices to PAC’S

Invoices in Zoho Books can be stamped to the Electronic Invoicing portal with the click of a button. If you have enabled transaction approval, then the invoices must be approved before you can stamp them to PAC’S. If you’ve set up multi-level approval, then you can stamp invoices only after they’ve been approved by the final approver.

Here’s how you can stamp invoices to the PAC’S:

• Go to Sales from the left sidebar and navigate to Invoices.
• Select the invoice that you want to stamp to the portal.
• Click the Stamp Invoice button.

If the invoice is stamped to the PAC’S successfully, then a UUID and QR Code will be generated by the PAC’S. This UUID is unique to each invoice and will be used to identify it for the entire financial year.

Once the invoice is stamped, you can download the CFDI in the PDF or XML format. The stamped invoice will also have the SAT Digital Stamp, CFDI Digital Seal and Original String details at the bottom of the invoice PDF.

Bulk Stamp

You can save time and stamp multiple invoices to the SAT at once, using bulk actions in Zoho Books. Here’s how:

• Go to Sales and select Invoices.
• Click All Invoices above the list of invoices.
• Select Ready-to-be Stamped for Electronic Invoicing from the list of filters.
• Select the invoices that you want to stamp to the portal.
• Click the More button on the top.
• Select Stamp Invoices.

Now, stamping the selected invoices to the SAT will be initiated. When successful, a QR code and UUID will be generated for all of them.

If any of these invoices failed to be stamped to the SAT, you will be notified of it and an error summary will be sent to your (the user who initiates the stamp) email address that’s registered in Zoho Books.

Cancel Electronic Invoices

You cancel an electronic invoice if you’ve entered any incorrect values or for any other reason.

Cancelling an electronic invoice within 72 hours

If you cancel an electronic invoice in Zoho Books within the first 72 hours of generating an UUID for it, then it will be cancelled in the UUID also automatically.

To cancel an electronic invoice:

• Go to Sales and navigate to Invoices.
• Click the electronic invoice that you want to cancel.
• Click the Cancel CFDI button.
• Select the reason for cancelling the CFDI.
• Click Cancel CFDI.

Cancelling an electronic invoice after 72 hours

After 72 hours of stamping an invoice to the SAT successfully, the UUID generated will no longer be available in the SAT. So cancelling in Zoho Books will not cancel it in the SAT automatically.

Instead, you can mark the electronic invoice in Zoho Books as cancelled, and then go to the SAT portal to cancel the UUID manually.

Once an electronic invoice has been cancelled/marked as cancelled in Zoho Books, its status will change to Void. If needed, you can clone this invoice, make the necessary changes, and then stamp this new invoice to SAT.