Chile EInvoicing - Don't Forget the Readiness Declaration

With Chile’s electronic invoicing mandates set to take effect in only a few short months, it is important to understand that your solution selection criteria should include more than just the DTE connectivity. If you don’t understand how you will meet the 7 requirements for “Readiness” through the SII website, you could find yourself with a solution that still doesn’t allow you to operate your business.

As part of go-live, an organization needs to make their readiness declaration.  The 7 requirements include:

1. Have Requested Folio CAF
2. Folio Management (in SAP)
3. Archive/Store the documents in repository
4. Send the documents to SII
5. Receive the inbound documents (and respond with accept or reject)
6. Reconcile Libros at month end match DTE sent daily
7. Contingency

The common mistake that many companies are making:

• Corporate IT teams are told that they just need to find a DTE integration provider and not looking at the end to end issue out of SAP ERP which is their system of record for all reporting extracts and trigger point for all transactions filed with the government

The issue:

• You create 3 disparate projects (one for SAP configuration, one for Libros report extractions, and one for transactional DTE management)
• All 3 pieces are required to work in combination in order to go-live, but who is the subject matter expert across the end to end process
• Modules are loosely integrated leaving audit risks. As an example, the SII returns to status messages for each DTE registered via email. You want to ensure you have full status updates on all of your DTE before you file your Libros reports. However, with 3 separate solution models, this almost never gets done. And it is the little areas and gaps that create the most risk.
• How does a DTE provider certify your test data scenarios across SAP configuration that was done by some other team and report extractions that were done by another team?

The ramification of not looking at this holistically: Your internal teams are left trying to figure out the process for readiness and managing the objectives by November 1st, 2014.

• Do you have the subject matter expertise to ensure you pass all the requirements?
• Have the providers you looked at include this Readiness project work as part of their service? Has this been overlooked by the teams as the requirements are new?
• Will you not be able to show one part of the 7 step process because your systems are loosely coupled and not a single solution?

You will run into a lot of vendors in Chile, and many will say they can support compliance. So ensure you understand the entire process or you will find yourself with operational issues, IT support issues and at risk for audit penalties.  Remember this is as much a project management issue and SAP ERP issues as it is a DTE integration issue. Make sure your providers solve the SAP configuration issues, the Libros reporting extracts, the DTE integration and the assistance and management of your readiness declaration.