Is your branch a block on the e-invoice, or invisible inside one? — 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 you have ever been shown a consolidated e-invoice and tried to find your shop on it. Sometimes your branch is a labelled block with your own document numbers on it, and sometimes it is nowhere at all — and which of those you get is not a setting anybody at your branch controls. In about ten minutes you will be able to tell the two apart and answer the question that follows.

Step 1 — Accept that one consolidated e-invoice is not one branch

After this step you will stop looking for a branch name that may not be there. A consolidated e-invoice is one document sent to LHDN that reports many receipts at once. The buyer on it is always General Public, the classification is always the consolidated one, and the billing frequency is Monthly. What varies is how the receipts inside are grouped, and there are exactly two ways BigLedger does it. One groups by the company and the document type. The other groups by the branch. They produce genuinely different documents from the same month of sales, and the difference decides whether your shop is visible on the finished e-invoice or not.

Reference: My E-Invoice Admin Applet — 3. Pools — what the buttons do

Step 2 — Read what by-document consolidation does to your branch

After this step you will know why your branch sometimes cannot be found. The by-document run groups only by company and document type. Every branch’s cash bills for the company go into the same consolidated e-invoice, one line per receipt, each line described by that receipt’s own document number. The header carries no branch at all — not your code, not your name, nothing. So a consolidated e-invoice built this way reports sales from your shop and from twenty-one others, mixed together, with nothing on the document that separates them. If somebody at head office asks you to confirm your branch’s figure from the e-invoice itself, this is why you cannot.

Reference: E-Invoice Pools & Submission Routing — By document or by branch — two ways to build one

Step 3 — Read what by-branch consolidation does instead

After this step you will recognise the other shape immediately. The by-branch run partitions the month by branch, document type, month and buyer tax number, and then walks each branch’s document numbers looking for consecutive runs. Numbers 1001 to 1005 become a single line reading as a range rather than five separate lines, which is what keeps a busy shop inside the two-hundred-line ceiling on one e-invoice. The header carries your branch code and your branch. So under this method your month is a labelled block you can check, and your document numbers are on the face of the document. It is the readable shape, and it is the less common one.

Reference: E-Invoice Pools & Submission Routing — By document or by branch — two ways to build one

Step 4 — Find out which one you are actually on

After this step you will not be misled by a field that looks like the answer. Each company record carries a setting called Batch Line Logic, with values that read by branch, by document and by line. It is worth setting correctly, because it records what the company was promised — but nothing that consolidates reads it. The method that actually runs is whichever of the two processors is scheduled on your tenant, and that is configured by support. Consolidating by branch is uncommon as a scheduled run; most companies that have an automatic consolidation at all are consolidated by document, and the by-branch button is used by hand. So the honest answer to which method you are on comes from support, or from looking at last month’s e-invoice.

Reference: Organization — Company E-Invoice tab

Step 5 — Know what every receipt you pull out costs the shape

After this step you will understand a small oddity in your own numbers. Under by-branch consolidation the lines are built from runs of consecutive document numbers, so a gap starts a new line. Every receipt that leaves the batch makes a gap: a sale of RM 10,000 or more that was diverted, a customer whose details you completed so their e-invoice went out on its own, a bill that was skipped. Pull three receipts out of the middle of a thousand and the month arrives as four ranges instead of one. That is not damage and nothing is missing — it is the shape telling the truth about which numbers were reported here and which were reported somewhere else.

Reference: E-Invoice Pools & Submission Routing — By document or by branch — two ways to build one

Step 6 — Answer “which e-invoice reported this sale?”

After this step you can answer it under either method. Do not start from the consolidated e-invoice and look for your branch, because under one of the two methods your branch is not on it. Start from the receipt. Every document that goes into a consolidated e-invoice keeps a link row pointing at the e-invoice that reported it, and those link rows are what the finance desk follows to tell you which document covered which sale. One more thing worth knowing before you compare dates: the consolidated e-invoice for last month’s receipts is dated the last day of last month whatever day the run actually happened, so the date on it will not match the day it was sent.

Reference: E-Invoice Submission Mechanics — The link back to your documents

How the steps fit together

    flowchart TD
  s1["Step 1 — Accept that one consolidated e-invoice is not one branch"]
  s2["Step 2 — Read what by-document consolidation does to your branch"]
  s3["Step 3 — Read what by-branch consolidation does instead"]
  s4["Step 4 — Find out which one you are actually on"]
  s5["Step 5 — Know what every receipt you pull out costs the shape"]
  s6["Step 6 — Answer 'which e-invoice reported this sale?'"]
  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: The sales LHDN never hears about from your branch · Back to the series · Play this as a presentation