The Swiss Federal Council has decided to require suppliers of the Swiss Federal Administration to submit electronic invoices if the contract value exceeds 5,000 Swiss francs. All information can be found at www.e-rechnung.admin.ch.

But a large number of other companies are also already working with e-invoices. Swisscom, for example, currently lists 23,000 companies that are connected to its trading platform Conextrade.

In the case of electronic invoicing, you transmit the data in a meta format (e.g. XML) to an interconnect partner (also called a service provider), which creates the e-invoices from your data in the format required by the recipient, signs them and transmits them securely to the customer. They receive the e-invoice directly in their ERP system or e-banking.

For the creation of e-invoices in Vertec, the Expert line is a prerequisite.

1. Specification. The specification depends on the requirements of the invoice recipient on the one hand and on those of the Interconnect partner on the other. The amount of data to be transmitted (invoice content, discounts, etc.) can vary from customer to customer and is the real challenge for implementation in Vertec.
2. Enhancement in Vertec at most: Depend on the scope, it may be necessary to work with custom field items and/or additional classes as well as constraints.
3. Once the specification has been created, the Vertec Python Script (see below) for the creation of the e-invoice is adapted accordingly. The script create the XML file and any attachments and stores it saved in a predefined location, location e.g. directly in the e-Service Connector for automatic further processing by Conextrade (or another interconnect partner).

For an implementation in your Vertec, please contact your Vertec advisor.

Below is the example of an implementation in Vertec. The example refers to the invoice with minimum content of the Specification Version 3.1 Swisscom for the trading platform Conextrade. An ETS XML file will be created and a PDF as an attachment. Please note that this is an example implementation. In a real implementation, you will work with your own specifications.

The required data must be available as described in Mapping file The following are the most important:

• Under System settings > General, your company must be defined as your company. It must have the following properties:
  • Name and address according to commercial register entry.
  • In the VAT number field, the VAT must be entered in UID format (e.g. CHE-123.456.789 VAT).
• The following two system settings must exist and contain a path:

• If you do not have it yet, you can create it once with the given code via the Vbscript editor:
  

  cxtExportXML	cxtExportPDF
  option explicit DIM PO set PO = Vertec.CreateObject(“StringProperty”) p.member(“propertyname”) = “cxtExportXML” p.member(“propertycaption”) = “Conextrade export path XML” p.member(“select type”) = 5 p.member(“group”) = 3 'invoice	option explicit DIM PO set PO = Vertec.CreateObject(“StringProperty”) p.member(“propertyname”) = “cxtExportPDF” p.member(“propertycaption”) = “Conextrade export path PDF” p.member(“select type”) = 5 p.member(“group”) = 3 'invoice

• As a PDF, the standard report called invoice (Word) is included. It must be registered under this name in Vertec (or the corresponding name must be changed in the Python Script).
• The script Create e-invoices.py must be registered in Vertec as follows:

An e-invoice can now be created on invoices that have been settled. Via menu entry (or right mouse button on the invoice in the list) the e-invoice is created:

If you do not have all the required data, you will receive an information message and you can complete the data accordingly:

Once the creation of the e-invoice has been successfully completed, you will receive a confirmation:

The two files are now located in the locations you have saved in the system settings: