Where the e-invoice PDF your customer receives comes from — the template, the logo, the address block and the QR — transcript

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

This presentation is for whoever has just been forwarded an e-invoice PDF by a customer with the words “this doesn’t look like your invoice”, and needs to answer where it came from before deciding what to change. In about nine minutes you will know which of two documents you are looking at, why the plain one looks the way it does, and what a company format can put on it that nothing else can.

Step 1 — Tell the two documents apart

After this step you will stop looking for the e-invoice layout in the print dialog. When you press Print on a sales invoice, BigLedger uses the format selected in that dialog, pre-selected from the branch’s default, and that is the invoice your branches hand across the counter. The e-invoice PDF is a different document with a different rule. It is rendered from the e-invoice record itself, using the company’s e-invoice format for that document type if one has been uploaded, and a built-in template shipped inside the platform if not. The branch default is never consulted for it. So a customer can hold two PDFs for the same sale that look nothing alike, and both are correct. The one with the QR code is the e-invoice, and everything that follows is about that one.

Reference: Printable Formats and Per-Branch Defaults — Four rules for choosing a layout

Step 2 — Know what the built-in template can and cannot show

After this step the plain PDF will make sense. The built-in template is handed only the e-invoice fields: the buyer block, the supplier block, the lines, the totals, the LHDN reference and the QR. It is not handed your company logo, your branch address, your phone number or your website, even though the template has slots named for them; those slots stay empty. Its only picture is the QR. And its supplier block is not read from your company record at all. It is the snapshot of you that was submitted to LHDN with that e-invoice, kept on the e-invoice header. So if the address on the PDF is one you corrected last month, the PDF is not wrong; it shows what was declared. Nothing you change on the company record today reaches a PDF already validated.

Reference: My E-Invoice Admin Applet — What the built-in template shows, and what it cannot

Step 3 — Upload a company format, and know what it can draw on

After this step you will know exactly what a company format adds. Open the company in the Organisation applet, E-Invoice tab, Printable sub-tab, and upload one JasperReports template per document type with a priority; the highest priority for a type wins. A company format receives everything the built-in one does and the company and branch set on top: your company logo, which is the file attached to the company record; the branch logo, address and phone from the branch record; your registered address, website and e-mail. Two limits are worth knowing before you design. On a consolidated e-invoice the company logo is deliberately left blank and there is no branch. And the sub-tab offers ten document types; the self-billed purchase invoice is not among them, so that document always uses the built-in template.

Reference: My E-Invoice Admin Applet — What a company format can use

Step 4 — Read the QR for what it is

After this step you will not promise a customer that the QR leads anywhere of yours. It encodes the LHDN validation link for that document, a web address made from the LHDN document identifier and a long share code, built the moment the poller reads Valid and stored on the e-invoice header. The template turns that address into a square image. Scanning it opens LHDN’s own page for the document, which is how a buyer checks the e-invoice is genuine. Two things follow. On a header that is not yet Valid the image is empty, so a PDF printed early has a blank square, not a broken one. And the QR is the same on the printed copy, the e-mailed copy and the exported zip, because all three are rendered from the same header by the same rule.

Reference: My E-Invoice Admin Applet — The QR

Step 5 — Change the things that are yours to change

After this step you will spend your effort where it counts. Yours to change today: the company format on the Printable sub-tab, which applies to every PDF rendered from now on including copies you resend; the logo and address on the company and branch records, which reach future e-invoices only; and the buyer’s e-mail on a header before it is Valid. Not yours from any screen: the layout of the built-in template, the attachment’s file name, and the subject, body and sending address of the e-mail that carries the PDF. Those live in a configuration BigLedger sets up for each company, and a request to your BigLedger contact is the route. A supplier block that is wrong on a Valid e-invoice is an e-invoice correction, not a template one; no layout will fix what was declared.

Reference: My E-Invoice Admin Applet — What you cannot change from a screen

How the steps fit together

    flowchart TD
  s1["Step 1 — Tell the two documents apart"]
  s2["Step 2 — Know what the built-in template can and cannot show"]
  s3["Step 3 — Upload a company format, and know what it can draw on"]
  s4["Step 4 — Read the QR for what it is"]
  s5["Step 5 — Change the things that are yours to change"]
  s1 --> s2
  s2 --> s3
  s3 --> s4
  s4 --> s5
  

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: When the validated PDF is e-mailed, to whom, from what address — and the three things that must exist first · Back to the series · Play this as a presentation