Take the buyer's details at the till

Play this lesson as slides — one slide per step, with the same narration. The full text of every step is on this page.

This lesson is for you if a customer has asked for an e-invoice and you are the one typing their details in. In about nine minutes you will know where the panel is, which fields the Inland Revenue Board, LHDN, will not do without, and the two mistakes that cause almost every rejection there is. It is worth doing properly once: a set of details keyed correctly at the counter is a sale nobody has to chase.

Step 1 — Open the e-invoice buyer panel

After this step you will know where on the counter screen the buyer’s details go. You are on Create Cash Bill, the ordinary selling screen, on its Main tab. Alongside the panels you already use — the customer, the discounts, the session — there is one for e-invoice buyer details. Open it while the customer is still in front of you, not after they have gone. The fields in it are the buyer’s name, an identity document type and its number, a tax identification number, a service tax registration number, a contact number, an e-mail address and an address. There is also a control to skip e-invoicing for the bill, which the last lesson told you to leave alone.

Reference: POS General — The counter screen (Create Cash Bill)

Step 2 — Get the fields LHDN insists on

After this step you will know what “enough” looks like, so you ask the customer once rather than twice. For the buyer, LHDN wants a name, a tax identification number, an identity document type with its number, an address and a contact number. Two details catch people out. The contact number has to be between eight and twenty characters, so a short extension number fails and so does anything padded with the letters N slash A. And the address must carry a first line, a city and a state. If any one of those three address parts is missing, the sale is not sent to LHDN at all — it is parked, with the reason attached, for someone to finish later.

Reference: E-Invoice Validation Rules & Troubleshooting — Mandatory fields

Step 3 — Fill the whole block, or none of it

After this step you will avoid the single most baffling rejection there is. What you type into this panel on the bill beats whatever is stored on the customer’s record — and BigLedger decides the panel is in use the moment any one of its fields has something in it. Type the customer’s name and nothing else, and the other seven fields are sent blank, even if they are sitting there perfectly correct on the customer record. So it is all or nothing. Either complete the block properly or clear every field of it and let the customer record supply everything. Half-filling it is how a document fails on a field you can plainly see is right.

Reference: E-Invoice Validation Rules & Troubleshooting — Which record does BigLedger actually send?

Step 4 — Key the identity into the right box

Every e-invoice carries the buyer’s tax number together with an identity document type and the number that goes with it. That one little group of fields causes more rejections than everything else in e-invoicing put together. The rule is short enough to keep in your head. Passport for anyone who is not Malaysian. Business registration number for a company. National identity number only for a Malaysian individual, and only as twelve digits with no dashes in them. And one habit matters as much as the rule: type the number, never paste it. A number copied out of a browser or a PDF can bring an invisible character with it, and the field will look perfectly right on screen while LHDN rejects it every single time.

Reference: E-Invoice Validation Rules & Troubleshooting — Get the buyer’s identity right — this is where most rejections come from

Step 5 — Handle a customer who has no tax number

After this step you will know what to do when the customer cannot give you the one field everything hangs on. Always prefer their real tax number. For a Malaysian individual who genuinely does not have one, there is a general public tax number that can stand in — but only together with identity type national identity number and a valid twelve-digit number, and that combination only. Put the general public number against a business registration number or a passport and LHDN refuses it. So for a Malaysian customer who cannot give you a usable pair, clear the panel completely and let the sale be reported in the monthly consolidation like any other walk-in. A passport is different, and the next lesson is about why: a foreign buyer cannot be consolidated at all, so there the real tax number is the only way through.

Reference: E-Invoice Validation Rules & Troubleshooting — General TINs — when you don’t have the buyer’s TIN

Step 6 — Know what wrong looks like, and what right looks like

After this step you will know what you have prevented. A sale with something missing is not lost — it is parked in a pool with the reason written on it, and the accounting is still correct. But the pool it lands in for a named buyer waits for a person, indefinitely; nothing ages a row and nothing warns anybody it has been sitting there since March. A sale with the identity keyed wrongly goes further and comes back rejected by LHDN, and the fix happens on the customer’s record rather than at your counter. And when a customer simply will not give you the details, take the sale anyway, tell them the e-invoice will follow and how it reaches them, and do not promise it over the counter — the next lesson has the words. Right looks like this: the panel complete, the bill final, and nobody comes back to you about it.

Reference: Pools and queues — How it behaves in BigLedger

How the steps fit together

    flowchart TD
  s1["Step 1 — Open the e-invoice buyer panel"]
  s2["Step 2 — Get the fields LHDN insists on"]
  s3["Step 3 — Fill the whole block, or none of it"]
  s4["Step 4 — Key the identity into the right box"]
  s5["Step 5 — Handle a customer who has no tax number"]
  s6["Step 6 — Know what wrong looks like, and what right looks like"]
  s1 --> s2
  s2 --> s3
  s3 --> s4
  s4 --> s5
  s5 --> s6
  

Check yourself

Three to five questions on what you just heard. Every correct answer links to the page that makes it correct, so you can check the source, not just the mark.

Next lesson: The sale that is too big for the monthly batch · Back to the course