Let your customers key their own details — 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 chasing customers for tax numbers has become somebody’s job. It does not have to be. A customer with a login can find their own receipt, key their own identity and address, have the tax number checked against the Inland Revenue Board — LHDN — while they are still on the screen, and leave it on your customer record ready for you to send. About twelve minutes, and the last two steps cover what it cannot do.

Step 1 — Understand what changes when the buyer keys it

After this step you will see why this is worth setting up for a twenty-two branch retailer. Today somebody in your office telephones a customer, writes their tax number on a note, and types it into a record. Through the portal the customer signs in, picks the account they act for, finds their own receipt and types the details themselves. Two things then happen that matter to you. Their identity and address are written onto your customer record, so the next sale to them is right as well, and the pooled receipt is re-processed on the spot. What does not happen is submission: the portal never calls the board. The document still goes out from your side.

Reference: MY E-Invoice Portal Applet — Overview

Step 2 — Give the customer a way in

After this step a customer can actually sign in and see something. Access is not a username you hand out; it is a login linked to that customer’s own entity record, and the portal’s account picker is built from that link. A login with no linked entity signs in successfully and sees nothing at all — and because the sign-in itself worked, that is the one people report as a broken portal rather than a missing link. Invite them from the customer’s Login tab, which can install the applets they need as part of the invite. For a corporate buyer with several sites, remember that one login can be linked to more than one account, and the account they pick scopes every screen.

Reference: Customer Maintenance — Edit customer

Step 3 — Make sure they can find the receipt

After this step your customers will stop telling you the portal cannot find their purchase. There are two ways in, and both need the document to be finalised with a PIN on it. They can search on the invoice number together with the amount and the transaction date, which have to match the document exactly, or on the invoice number together with that PIN. The PIN route is much kinder to a shopper reading a slip. Both searches look through the three pools and then the to-IRB headers, so an e-invoice already issued is found as well. When nothing is found, the reasons are that the receipt was already consolidated, that it was skipped, that it is still in the posting queue, or that they are signed in against the wrong account.

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

Step 4 — Know what they fill in, and what gets checked

After this step you will be able to write the two-line instruction you send them. The form asks for a name, a tax number, an identity number, a contact number and an address, and it is strict about which of those are required, so they will not get past it half-filled. The part worth telling them about is the one real check on the screen. Verify asks the board whether that tax number and that identity number belong together, before anything is saved — so a mismatched pair is caught while your customer is still sitting there to correct it, rather than three weeks later on a document neither of you is looking at.

Reference: MY E-Invoice Portal Applet — Fields

Step 5 — Know where it lands and what is still yours to do

After this step you will not lose a request between two applets. Submitting runs two things in order. The identity and address are written onto the customer’s entity record, then the pool row is processed again, after checks that no request has already been made for it and that the document is not already inside a submitted e-invoice. If the mandatory check now passes you get an e-invoice record; if something is still missing you get the pool row back with a validation error, and you finish it with Save and Resubmit. The requests themselves are listed under Internal Submission, on Portal Request — check it as a habit, because no page documents an e-mail telling you one arrived. If a customer will not use the portal at all, Customer Invitations on your own side keys the same details for them, and you then finish the row in the admin applet exactly as above.

Reference: MY E-Invoice Portal Applet — Lifecycle and effects

Step 6 — Know the three times it cannot help

After this step you will know when to stop pointing customers at the portal. First, a receipt already inside a validated consolidated e-invoice cannot be re-issued individually: that needs a cancellation inside seventy-two hours, or a credit note, which is why the month-end deadline matters. Second, a buyer whose tax number and identity do not agree with the board’s record fails Verify however many times they retype it. Third, a receipt from a sale finalised minutes ago may still be in the posting queue rather than in a pool, and the portal finds nothing until it lands — so a customer at your counter should be given a moment, not an explanation. And there is nothing to configure in the portal itself: its own settings screens save nothing, so do not spend an afternoon on them.

Reference: MY E-Invoice Portal Applet — Troubleshooting

How the steps fit together

    flowchart TD
  s1["Step 1 — Understand what changes when the buyer keys it"]
  s2["Step 2 — Give the customer a way in"]
  s3["Step 3 — Make sure they can find the receipt"]
  s4["Step 4 — Know what they fill in, and what gets checked"]
  s5["Step 5 — Know where it lands and what is still yours to do"]
  s6["Step 6 — Know the three times it cannot help"]
  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.

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