Real-time invoice verification by tax authority

I had been trying to access this API link but link wasn’t working. I just realized with their recent move to Linux servers, links have changed… With simple link edit, I can access it.

After a quick look, there is an easy way to connect to the API and do edits to businesses, but I don’t think this will do. I would have to make an app to constantly connect and look for changes, and if there is change, connect to TA, push the invoice, get QR code, apply it to the invoice. This is not going to be reliable solution, especially not for an accounting software, and it’s too clunky.

I will keep digging and try to see if there is another way to approach this.

Ok I understand, your business case has to work in real-time. But what if there is a small business which lets say only issues a couple of invoices in the end of each week ? Then a manual start of the connection to push all the invoices all at once could be acceptable for such a business ?

In order of preference, in your situation I would:

  1. Look at not using your accounting system for point of sale transactions. Cash registers which are compatible with your government’s requirements would be available.

  2. Use your government’s offline submission option. A report transformation could easily generate the outgoing data. Batch update could be used for the incoming data.

  3. Real time data interchange is hard. Lubos maybe interested in working with your programer as a test case however if I was him I would get a European example working first as the market is larger

This is only viable option for me. Montenegro did not make this system, nor the implementation. We have implemented it from some EU countries and I believe it’s going to be the EU standard. This system is still in testing phase in Montenegro in November, and I could provide with testing account and help the program be registered locally so it can be used in MNE.

If @lubos is interested, we could work on it and we could test it. Implementing in MNE doesn’t make time investment sense, I know, but only as testing grounds as other countries will, sooner or later, do the same.

We have similar law in Fiji. I wonder if there are any developers on this forum working towards such implementations.

We have a similar model in Kenya as from 1st August 2021 and all business people must comply by 31st July 2022. There is similar law in Tanzania and Rwanda and is likely to spread across the entire Eastern African jurisdiction (Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda, DRC etc). This is a global trend that Manager should take seriously in order to complete with other providers worldwide.

Looks like Manager should up their game by dedicating time to read through the Tax Authorities requirements. In my estimation, the tax authorities follow the same concept, making it easier for Manager Programmers to create a standardized out-of-the-box API

I am not very smart, and I am not a programmer. I am an accountant. All the authorities are asking for in my interpretation, is a means to send sale transaction data to Authority validation server, to which the server issues a signature to be superimposed on the (cash sale receipt or invoice). The signature allows buyers to verify the authenticity of their fiscal cash sale/invoice/debit or credit notes.

I already have clients and the test environment from Kenyan Tax Authority in case anyone needs to give it a try or to get a feel of what is going on.

Attached is the Kenyan version of the intergration.

Revised-Electronic-Tax-Register-Specifications (2).pdf (1.3 MB)

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It seems like users are bearing legal costs associated with new tax regulations and are trying to pass their entire costs down to the software developers.

I am not associated with NG Software, but I am certain that reading and complying with such extensive local standards for ~200 countries is an impossible task to do within time limits and a very costly one to do for free, especially since it’s not something that’s maintenance free since each country is going to have their own schema and are likely to make frequent revisions and that would be rabbit hole for Manager if the developer makes the mistake of accepting full responsibility for it.

That’s why almost all major players have these localizations either as paid customizations, as community contributions or pass it down to local partners.

The only practical solution would be the API since it’s already open and anyone can give that piece of information to any local developer to do anything they want with it.

I do hope that the developer makes improvements to the API or develop a framework for users to easily generate custom integrations with external parties, but the community would definitely need to step up and accept their part of responsibility.

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All they are asking for? What you describe is hugely complex. As @Ealfardan pointed out, what might look similar to you will involve different standards and protocols everywhere.

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Having read the documentation, it’s not really “real-time” verification, as it can be done in batches.

For now
The whole thing is currently doable by pulling json data into a staging platform to transform into xml that could be sent to the authorities. The bulk of work would concentrate around transforming Manager output to your authority’s xml schema and handling transmission errors.

What platforms can you use? You can certainly develop your own software but that would be an overkill since there’s tons of free or readily available platforms to use like:

  • n8n
  • Microsoft ecosystem (Excel, Power BI, Power Automate)
  • Google ecosystem (Sheets, Google Code)

I don’t think this is costly to pull off as it’s really a one to three day job for a decent developer.

Possible future solutions
Maybe Manager can include two additional utilities in the settings which are:

  • Document templates. A visual utility where you can select the document that you need to write in either json or xml, dump the entire xml schema in a code field and then visually map the xml fields to the fields of the document.

  • Call URL. Another visual utility where you can select the trigger (e.g. sales invoice Create button) select url and method and select the file to be transmitted whether it’s the json of the document or an xml template of that particular document. The trigger could also be custom batch button in the document table view. I think TeamDesk provides a good rough example of just that here:
    https://www.teamdesk.net/help/11.4.5.aspx.
    But it could be something entirely different but to the same effect.

These two should make custom xml integrations a trivial task for any developer and wouldn’t take more than a day to setup by the user or someone hired by users. The technical feasiblity and details of it is to be determined by @lubos, if he sees that this is the way to go.

We were able to achieve this in Italy through this workflow:

Manager > n8n > MySQL > n8n > Italian e-invoice

Why did we use the intermediate step of MySQL? For two main reasons. First to elaborate data and also combining it with other external DBs. Secondly to use it also with external reporting tools.

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Is it possible for you to hook me up with your developers? I will pay their market rate.

Thank you very much. Lets us wait for @lubos to give us directions.

You have made me understand something about how NG Software runs Manager. Maybe the whole issue can be solved by having a sub-forum room for each country within this forum. Users from each country can then come together, work on their local needs. Such customization can then be considered by NG Software and possibly recommended to new users from those countries.

Some users like myself are willing to pay for customization but cannot find proper programmers.

I am glad I could help.

Please check this out:

That’s the first move towards enabling sharing of data directly through Manager without relying on third party app.

It’s still rough, but it’s a move in the right direction. So you will still need to write the entire json to xml transformation as part of the custom action.

This has already been discussed but not yet implemented. Maybe if we can have a category for “Code” that everyone can categorize their post to without moderator intervention.

Since we now have the ability to do custom themes and actions, why not have a page for developers similar to accountants page in the main website?

Maybe add back the ability to write custom transformations code as well.

We developed everything internally in the company. I already promised a tutorial. I Just need to find some free time to write it.

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The best thing to do, is connect the gadget specified to the ETR Machine and the system will send invoice transaction directly to KRA Server

@Hamiltonsmith, I have no idea what you are referring to (and directed your response to me, personally). You have introduced “the gadget,” some kind of ETR Machine, and the KRA Server in the 42nd post of a lengthy thread. How are these related to the subject?

Sorry my friend,

I was replying to the above comment about Complying with Kenya Revenue Authority and I accidentally shared on your comment

Apologies once again