Mexico eInvoicing - Are you prepared for CFDI

The chatter has begun in Mexico around the upcoming changes to CFDI. With more than 500,000 companies potentially affected, there is a lot of posturing by solutions in the market place. But what is important and can derail your transition is not the obvious, but what is in the details. If you overlook these following requirements, you may find your company in an audit or facing stiff penalties.

1. Shared Service organization often overlook the requirement to validate all inbound supplier invoices. This legislation took effect on Dec. 28 2012.  Many companies I speak with will tell me that they handle this manually.  And this is fine until the volume of CFDI jumps 1000%. Make sure you understand the implications on your Accounts Payable organization or you may face criminal prosecution for tax evasion.  
2. Your Accounting system will not be a one to one plug in to the government XML standard. This is the most overlooked issue in Mexico and can cause project delays of months.  Ensure your solution understand how to manage your SAP master data or you will have nightmares as you try to get your data into the system.
3. Your customers will have impact on the solution design.  The Mexico CFDI process is capable of customer specific customization in the XML, known as an Addenda, and in the PDF layout.  Make sure your provider is not telling you to give you one file format or that there is a standard PDF format. If you overlook this isse - your customers will probably not pay you.
4. Project implementation in English and Spanish -- this is a business process change that affects AR, AP and Logistics -- it will require SAP configuration changes, so you global team better be able to communicate clearly to define requirements and objectives.

In the coming weeks, we will explore each of these points in more detail, but contact the global providers and start planning today.