- SAP Managed Tags:
Mikhail Smirnov – CSL Behring, Pradyumna Kumar Mishra – SAP SEOverview
This is the first part of the blog post series where we are going to give you an overview of Greek e-books reporting, and SAP Document Compliance solution to fulfill its’ requirements. The main SAP customization objects and logic behind them in SAP Document Compliance Greece e-book solution will be explained in the next parts (Part 2, Part 3).
Greek myDATA e-books summary
E-books reporting is a mandatory statutory requirement in Greece. It is imposed by AADE (the Greek Independent Authority of Public Revenue (IAPR)), which has created the myDATA portal (My Digital Accounting and Tax Application). MyDATA platform enables Greek companies to submit Electronic Books (e-books), in which companies will report all income and expense transactions including taxes. Hence, myDATA will receive complete tax (VAT) and fiscal result (profit tax) reports for every year. All companies keeping accounting records according to the Greek Accounting Standards must comply. Non-resident companies are out of scope.
E-books look like or even may be referred as “e-invoicing”, but it has nothing to do with e-invoicing. Electronic Books are submitted both by buyers and sellers and they contain classification for every expense and revenue item on the invoice based on their VAT treatment. VAT information itself is also classified in e-books. Furthermore, there are many other additional information in Electronic Books. All this information is not present in neither paper nor e-invoices.
In the end AADE will create income and balance sheet statements for all businesses operating in the country using their own common classification instead of General Ledger Accounts unique in every company. In addition, AADE will also cross check, that local seller´s invoices are properly posted by buyer.
AADE has English page of myDATA portal, where you can find related documentation in English.
Impose of e-books reporting was postponed several times by AADE. Currently only seller outgoing part of Electronic Books is mandatory as of calendar year 2021 beginning. Buyer part and other expenses parts are mandatory only as of calendar year 2022 beginning, however you still can submit them in calendar year 2021 for testing and training purposes.
SAP Document Compliance (DC) Architecture
SAP developed an integrated global end-to-end solution SAP Document Compliance (formerly known as eDocument) to fulfill Greece e-books requirements and similar electronic documents requirements that have legal compliance aspects in other countries. This solution helps companies in more than 26+ countries covering 55+ scenarios to submit documents in electronic form to their governments or business partners. Number of countries with similar electronic documents requirements keep growing and SAP timely provides country-specific extensions in SAP Document Compliance solution. As well SAP communicates updates about these extensions and plans in related summits.
SAP Document Compliance allows you to create electronic documents in local XML formats (called EDOC) adhering to Tax Authority/Business Partners requirements, transmit them to receiver and get response back. It is user friendly solution providing a single interface (Cockpit) for all countries and processes like e-invoices, e-delivery, e-waybill, e-boleta , email delivery, e-payment , etc.
Here is an image of eDocument Cockpit, where you can see processes grouped per countries on the left and allowed actions (buttons) with eDocs of selected process on the top:
Image 1 from CSL Behring Internal system.
SAP DC follows one of the deployment models depending on the country:
Platform as a Service (PaaS) Solutions
Based on SAP Document Compliance, on premise edition and SAP Cloud Platform Integration to cover e-invoicing and real time reporting requirements in multiple countries. Examples: SAP Document Compliance Greek e-books and Spain Electronic Invoicing of Public Entities are a Paas Solutions.
Image 2 from SAP Document Compliance Overview.pdf.
Image 3 from SAP Document Compliance Overview.pdf.
Software as a Service (SaaS) Solutions
SAP Document Compliance, cloud edition provides the ability to send and receive fully compliant invoices based on the Peppol and ZUGFeRD standards. Example: SAP Document Compliance Germany e-Invoicing is a SaaS solution. SAP acts in this case as certified service provider equipped with a Peppol Access Point and can offer this service only as a cloud business application.
Image 4 from SAP Document Compliance Overview.pdf.
SAP Document Compliance, outbound invoicing option for Brazil & inbound invoicing option for Brazil provide the ability to send / receive and further process fully compliant Nota Fiscal documents in Brazil
Image 5 from SAP Document Compliance Overview.pdf.
Altogether, it makes SAP Document Compliance an excellent product for global companies especially with shared service centers.
SAP Document Compliance solution comprises the following:
- eDocument Framework.
The eDocument Framework is a solution to manage electronic documents that have legal compliance aspects. Install it into your SAP ECC or S/4 system to allow creation of the eDocuments and to deliver generic programs and functions (for example, the eDocument Cockpit). Follow SAP Note 2134248 – eDocument Framework – Installation Overview. The eDocument country-specific solutions are all built on top of this framework
- SAP Document Compliance, on premise edition.
Implementation of this component includes a limited runtime license of SAP Application Interface Framework (AIF). During the eDocument Framework installation, AIF is a mandatory requirement. AIF is needed to map the transactional data to the required country-specific XML format, save the XML files (eDocuments), do error handling and monitoring and connect to the communication service. For more information, refer to the SAP Note 2378414 and SAP Note 2134248.
- Country specific solution.
After installing the eDocument Framework proceed with Installation of country/region-specific notes. You only need to install and configure the countries you are working with. In case of Greece e-books follow 2930400 - SAP Document Compliance Greece: Tax Register Books (e-Books).
- Service to communicate with external systems
In case of Paas Solution like Greece, You need subscription to SAP Cloud Platform Integration – CPI (if your system was onboarded before July 2020) or SAP Integration Suite. In one of these services you implement communication with external service using SAP standard delivered CPI Iflows. The external web service of Greek tax authority is an Application Programming Interface (RESTAPI) and it allows us to communicate with myDATA portal.
In case of SaaS Solution like Germany e-Invoicing, you need subscription to Peppol Exchange Service for the Cloud Edition of SAP Document Compliance.
Both Saas and Paas models can run in parallel in SAP Document Compliance to cover all your country specific scenarios.
Such a multi-component architecture in SAP Document Compliance gives flexibility to build exactly required solution fulfilling local statutory requirements as well as connection requirements of different external web services in every country. In this solution you can track in real time the whole journey of an electronic document from the source posting till the partner´s confirmation. SAP Document Compliance framework can be extended to support new countries and processes if needed.
The figure below depicts an example of eDocument processing in the components of Document Compliance end-to-end solution.
Image 6 from SAP Note 2930400.
Conclusion
I hope that this blog post is useful for your understanding of SAP Document Compliance architecture and driving forces behind it. You can find more information about every component of the solution and their latest updates in the SAP Notes mentioned above. Also you can check SAP Jam country related Communities for additional documentation like FAQs and discussion forums. Do not hesitate to comment and share your experience and thoughts on this topic. The core SAP customization objects of Greek e-book solution are explained in the next parts (Part 2, Part 3).
Finally, I would like to thank Pradyumna Kumar Mishra, Expert from the SAP SE, for his input to this article. Pradyumna contributed to our CSL Greece e-books implementation project within SAP Max Attention program. On completion of the project, CSL Behring became one of the first companies in Greece running a fully operational Greece e-book solution.
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