In today’s post we are going to talk about a problem that companies in Spain usually encounter when reporting to the SII.
But what is SII?
The acronym for SII stands for Provision of Inmmediate Information and is the system by which the Value Added Tax (VAT) record books are kept almost instantaneously through the AEAT Electronic Headquarters of the invoicing records.which is essential for the monthly VAT refund.
Among the reasons for its implementation are tax control and taxpayer assistance, providing data such as invoice date, company name, recipient’s VAT number or invoice reference.
In this other post, you can find out why SAP is an optimal solution for sending information to the SII.
What information must be provided to the SII?
We are going to focus on the information to be provided to the SII about the invoice reference field, because it is quite common that customers indicate us some need, specifically the problem with the “long reference” of the invoice number.
The reports sent to the SII must include the complete reference of the invoice number sent by the supplier. This is currently a problem, because the standard character limit in SAP for the Reference field is 16 characters., therefore, all those invoices that enter with a reference number longer than 16 characters cannot be correctly reported to the SII, since they would be sent with an incomplete reference number.
Proposed solutions from SAP
SAP has echoed this new legal requirement coming from Spain, indicating how the problem can be solved by posting from standard MIRO and/or FB60 transactions.
The proposed solutions are as follows:
- Using another field where it shows the combination of the SAP Reference field plus another field where the rest of the characters that do not enter by length in the Reference field are stored, or vice versa.
- Using a field other than the SAP Reference field that allows you to store all the characters of the invoice reference.
Here is the official note with the solution proposed by SAP.
Solutions proposed by OpenText
On the other hand, for customers using VIM, the manufacturer OpenText, based on the solution offered by the SAP standard, also offers several solutions for the long reference problem:
- Perform an automatic split on the reference that arrives in the invoice (in case it is longer than 16 characters), saving the information in the Reference and Document Header Text fields, where the prefix would go to the Reference field and the rest of the sequence of numbers to the Header Text. The result would be visible in a third field called “Long reference”.
- Perform an automatic split on the reference that arrives in the invoice (in case it is longer than 16 characters), saving the information in the fields Document Header Text and Reference, where the prefix would go to the Header Text field and the rest of the sequence of numbers to the Reference field. The result is visible in the “Long reference” field.
In the example below, Opentext solution 2 has been applied, with the prefix in the Header text field and the rest of the number sequence in the Reference field.
The result obtained for the Long Reference appears in the “Long Reference” field:
Customized solutions
From Brait, as experts in the VIM solution, we have made customized solutions to solve the problem and improve the solution offered from OpenText when the standard does not cover all the requirements.
Sometimes, for example, users need to modify the value of the “Long reference” field because for some reason it has not been filled in correctly. These modifications cannot be made with the OpenText standard, since they do not modify the values of the Reference and Header text fields of the document.
With our solution, when a modification is made to the “Long reference” field, automatically and in real time, a split of the characters is performed and the values of the Header Text and Header fields are refreshed. In this way we ensure that these fields always have the correct values in the tables, and therefore the correct reference can be sent in the report to the SII.
If you are looking for a solution to solve the problem of the long reference in VIM, from Brait we will be happy to help you, do not hesitate to contact us.
