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Clear the Individual Pool

Lesson 3 of 6 in Work the pools until nothing is stuck · about 12 minutes · for the whole-system operator — you run the books.

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 you run the books at GadgetSphere and the Individual Pool has rows in it that you have been walking past. In about twelve minutes you will work one to a finish and learn the order to work the rest in: the ones with a tax number waiting to be found, the ones that belong in the batch instead, and the two kinds that have no way out at all. This is the pool that quietly holds your largest unreported sales, so we suggest giving it a standing slot in your month rather than a visit when somebody complains.

Step 1 — Understand what a row here costs you

After this step you will treat this pool differently from the other two. Every row in the Individual Pool is a sale you have not reported to LHDN, and nothing in BigLedger will ever report it for you. No run sweeps it, no rule ages it, and there is no alert anywhere in e-invoicing that tells you a row has been sitting since March. It simply waits, and because GadgetSphere’s largest sales are the ones diverted here, the amounts are five figures rather than the few hundred ringgit of a counter receipt. The people who find these rows are usually not you and usually much later, which is why the first job of any cycle is to open this screen and look.

Screen: the Individual Pool listing, sorted oldest first, with the document date and amount columns showing rows from earlier months

Reference: Pools and queues — How it behaves in BigLedger

Step 2 — Find the tax number you are allowed to find

After this step the corporate rows are gone. GadgetSphere sees about 112 invoices of RM 10,000 or more a month, and the ones carrying a business registration number are the cheapest rows in this pool to finish. Open the row and use Get TIN, or Verify TIN, on the buyer: BigLedger asks LHDN for the number that goes with the identity type and value in front of you. Press it at any amount. The RM 10,000 line belongs to the search BigLedger runs by itself, unasked, on a document of that size whose identity type is a registration number and whose tax number is blank — below it nothing is tried for you, which is exactly why a small sale with a missing number simply parks and why the button is worth pressing. Dozens at once go through Tools, then Bulk Tin Validation, as one file.

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

Step 3 — Use a General TIN only where it is allowed

After this step you can tell the rows a General TIN rescues from the rows it does not. LHDN publishes standing tax numbers for cases where a real one is not available, and the one you will reach for is the general public number for local buyers. It works on an individual e-invoice, but only with identity type NRIC and a genuine twelve-digit national identity number beside it; any other combination is rejected. A registration number is never accepted with it, so a company either gives you its real number or, under RM 10,000, gets consolidated instead. The government number is not a general stand-in either. And if a buyer has a tax number but no identity value, BigLedger fills that value with zeroes for you.

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

Step 4 — Move what you genuinely cannot complete

After this step the rows you will never complete are somewhere they can still be reported. For a receipt under RM 10,000 where the customer walked out an hour ago and is never coming back, the honest answer is not to keep the row. Use Move To Batch Pool and let it be consolidated with everything else from the month. Timing is the whole trick. Do it before your company’s consolidation run and it is picked up with the right month. Do it afterwards and the next run takes it, dating it to the last day of the previous month, which is right only while that is still the month it belongs to. A row moved in October for an August sale is reported in the wrong period.

Reference: The Month-End E-Invoice Cycle (1st to 7th) — Step 1: Clear the Individual Pool before consolidation runs

Step 5 — Recognise the two rows with no way out

After this step you will stop trying to move rows that cannot be moved. The first is size. Try to move a sales invoice or cash bill of RM 10,000 or more into the Batch Pool and BigLedger refuses, with the message that it cannot move a transaction with amount more than or equal to 10000. LHDN does not allow a sale that size inside a consolidation, so the buyer’s real tax number is the only road. The second is a foreign buyer. A passport holder with no tax number is not submitted at all: no General TIN is ever substituted for a passport, and a consolidated e-invoice cannot carry a foreign buyer. There is one manual route the software will not take for you — LHDN publishes a General TIN for foreign buyers, and it has to be keyed onto the document by hand. Otherwise both of these are fixed at the counter, not here.

Reference: E-Invoice Pools & Submission Routing — Common mistakes

Step 6 — Let your buyers do the typing

After this step you have a way to shrink this pool that does not involve telephoning anybody. Your customers can complete their own details through the My E-Invoice Portal: the buyer finds their receipt, keys their tax number, identity and address, and submits them. The details land on your customer record, and the pooled receipt is then ready for you to finish with Save and Resubmit. For a 22-branch retailer that is the difference between chasing details and having them arrive. It works while the receipt is still pooled, not after it has been reported inside a validated consolidated e-invoice, and it fills in data for you; the last press is still yours. A request from your web store is the other shape entirely, and it does not wait for you: the receipt leaves the batch, goes as an individual e-invoice in the buyer’s name, any consolidated document already built is rebuilt without it, and nothing tells you it happened.

Reference: E-Invoice Pools & Submission Routing — Frequently asked questions

How the steps fit together

    flowchart TD
  s1["Step 1 — Understand what a row here costs you"]
  s2["Step 2 — Find the tax number you are allowed to find"]
  s3["Step 3 — Use a General TIN only where it is allowed"]
  s4["Step 4 — Move what you genuinely cannot complete"]
  s5["Step 5 — Recognise the two rows with no way out"]
  s6["Step 6 — Let your buyers do the typing"]
  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.

1. A RM 24,600 invoice sits in the Individual Pool and the buyer will not give you a tax number. Can you move it to the Batch Pool?


2. A Malaysian individual bought a RM 3,000 tablet and has no tax number. What may you put on an individual e-invoice for them?


3. A RM 15,000 invoice to a company has the registration number on file and the tax number blank. What does BigLedger do?


4. Nobody opens the Individual Pool for three months. What happens to the rows?


5. A customer telephones a week later asking for their own e-invoice for a pooled receipt. What is the least work for you?


Answer key
  1. No; the move is refused because the amount is RM 10,000 or moreE-Invoice Pools & Submission Routing — Common mistakes
  2. The general public TIN, together with identity type NRIC and a valid twelve-digit numberE-Invoice Validation Rules & Troubleshooting — General TINs — when you don't have the buyer's TIN
  3. Searches LHDN's registry by registration number and fills the tax number inE-Invoice Validation Rules & Troubleshooting — General TINs — when you don't have the buyer's TIN
  4. They wait, unreported, with nothing ageing them or warning youPools and queues — How it behaves in BigLedger
  5. Send them to the buyer portal to enter their own details, then Save and Resubmit the rowE-Invoice Pools & Submission Routing — Frequently asked questions
This is a self-check. Your answers are marked in your browser and stay there — nothing is sent anywhere, nothing is recorded, and the marking is readable in the page source, so it is not a credential. Open the answer key at any time.

Next lesson: Work the Batch Pool without stranding a receipt · Back to the course

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