Open the door properly, and know when it closes — transcript

Play this as a presentation — one slide per step, with the same narration. Every word of every step is on this page.

This lesson is for you if GadgetSphere’s buyers should be able to ask for their own e-invoices and today they mostly cannot find how. Six settings and habits decide whether that path works, and none of them is on the request page itself. About eleven minutes, and the last step is the one you will use most, because it is what you say when somebody asks too late.

Step 1 — Put the request page where the tracking link expects it

After this step you will avoid a broken link you would otherwise send to every guest. The request widget has no menu of its own; it renders wherever your storefront layout puts it, and you place it from the commerce admin applet onto a customer portal page. The page code matters. When BigLedger e-mails a guest their tracking link, it builds that link against a page code of E-Invoice on your website. Put the widget somewhere else and the link in every guest’s e-mail goes to a page that does not hold the widget.

Reference: Storefront E-Invoice Request — Screens and menus

Step 2 — Decide how long the window stays open

After this step you will have made a choice instead of inheriting a default. Your company’s e-invoice request extension period drives the date picker a shopper uses. Leave it unset and a buyer may only pick dates in the current calendar month, so anybody who thinks about it on the first of the following month is already too late. Set a day of the month and last month stays reachable until that day passes. Pick a day that matches how you actually work — after your consolidation run there is far less you can do, so leaving the window open past it helps nobody.

Reference: Storefront E-Invoice Request — The request window

Step 3 — Print the PIN where a shopper can reach it

After this step you will remove a reason a buyer gives up. There are two ways to find a receipt: the number with the amount and date, which must all match exactly, or the number with the PIN, the personal identification number held on the pool row. The PIN search has no date field at all, so it sidesteps both the window and any confusion about which day a late-evening purchase fell on. That only helps if the PIN is actually printed on what the shopper is holding. Check one of your own receipts from a Penang branch before you assume it is there.

Reference: Storefront E-Invoice Request — Search — By Pin

Step 4 — Give your regular buyers an account instead

After this step you will route your business customers away from the guest path, where they do not belong. A corporate customer buying from GadgetSphere Distribution every month should not be typing their tax number into a public form each time. Give them a portal login linked to their customer record, and the portal’s account menu is built from that link. Get the link wrong and they sign in successfully and see nothing at all, which is a confusing failure to be on the receiving end of. Test one invitation end to end before you send twenty.

Reference: MY E-Invoice Portal Applet — Before you can use it

Step 5 — Fill the form in yourself when that is quicker

After this step you will know when you can do the buyer’s part for them. The portal applet’s settings carry a Customer Invitations screen, the same request form from your side. It updates the customer record and then sends the receipt through the same request processor, at once. Two limits apply. It works only for a customer account your own login is linked to, and only for a receipt in the Batch Pool. So for a regular corporate customer whose details arrive by e-mail, it saves a two-day exchange. For a walk-in shopper with no account, it does not apply, and the details go onto the pool row itself, followed by Save and Resubmit.

Reference: MY E-Invoice Portal Applet — Screens and menus

Step 6 — Say the true thing when it is too late

After this step you will give a straight answer rather than a hopeful one. Until your consolidated e-invoice is submitted, a receipt can still be pulled out and reported on its own with the buyer’s real details. Once it has been validated, their purchase sits inside a filed tax record covering thousands of other sales, and BigLedger has no way to lift one receipt out. A cancellation cancels the whole consolidated e-invoice, and its other receipts stay unreported until support pushes them back. Do not do that for one buyer. Tell them the truth, and take the question to whoever handles your tax.

Reference: My E-Invoice Admin Applet — 6. Cancellation (Rejection Requests → Cancellation Queue)

How the steps fit together

    flowchart TD
  s1["Step 1 — Put the request page where the tracking link expects it"]
  s2["Step 2 — Decide how long the window stays open"]
  s3["Step 3 — Print the PIN where a shopper can reach it"]
  s4["Step 4 — Give your regular buyers an account instead"]
  s5["Step 5 — Fill the form in yourself when that is quicker"]
  s6["Step 6 — Say the true thing when it is too late"]
  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.

Back to the series · Play this as a presentation