March 24, 2023

Dematerialized invoices: the standardization of company legal information begins with DQE

Starting in 2024, French regulatory requirements will make dematerialized invoicing between companies the norm. DQE provides solutions for standardizing and enriching the company legal information that is part of the mandatory wording required in dematerialized invoices.

Electronic invoicing in transactions between French companies subject to VAT will be deployed as of July 1, 2024 for large companies, and then gradually for all companies by 2026. Its main objectives are to simplify the invoicing chain and the collection of VAT.

The associated obligations include the digital exchange of invoices via dematerialization partner platforms that address, control and receive invoices. Another requirement is a single standardized format for all invoices, whether outgoing (ability to issue compliant invoices) or incoming (ability to integrate standardized invoices into internal systems).

Company information: what must be included in the dematerialized invoice?

In order to comply, companies need to master several fields of seller or buyer data in invoices, depending on whether they are issuing or receiving them. In addition to the unique invoice number, date of service/sale and transaction information, companies must also standardize several company information data fields:

  • Invoices must include the buyer’s and seller’s company names, the addresses of their registered offices, and their VAT numbers.
  • For customers (buyers): their delivery address and their invoicing address, if different.
  • For the providers (sellers): registration number, legal form, share capital, trade and companies register number and city of registration for merchants, and the number in a trade directory and the French department where the business is registered in the case of artisans.

Companies will have to invoice without any mistakes in labeling, otherwise the invoice will be blocked by the dematerialization platform. The registration number is crucial: companies will have to have a third-party file that reliably associates the registration numbers with the name of each entity concerned.

How does DQE help to control the company information on dematerialized invoices?

The company information is complex and can change quickly. Knowing that, on average, 59 companies change their address every hour, collecting, controlling quality and updating addresses are particularly demanding tasks!

In this context, DQE solutions know how to standardize and enrich company information in curative mode in databases, as well as in real time at the time of entry to meet the obligations of dematerialized invoicing:

  • Compliance of existing BtoB databases: controlling the validity of records, rectifying invalid data, enriching missing data from the registration number or the company name,
  • Monitoring of changes and updating of registration numbers,
  • Standardizing postal addresses and the possibility of planning recurrent processing to maintain data quality over time,
  • Ensuring real-time compliance of new entries and autocompletion of company information fields by simply querying the registration number or the company name, to ensure that data is stored in compliance with the dematerialized invoice,
  • Deduplicating to eliminate duplicates, precisely identify each company (in particular differentiate between parent company and subsidiaries), and ensure reliable labeling and addressing of invoices.

Designed for quick and easy deployment, DQE’s solutions also offer native integration through dedicated connectors to the main business line tools on the market, particularly in Salesforce and Microsoft environments. Thus, users have easy access to their advanced data quality functions in their usual work environment.

About DQE

Because data quality is essential to customer knowledge and the construction of a lasting relationship, since 2008, DQE has provided its clients with innovative and comprehensive solutions that facilitate the collection of reliable data.

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