EDI invoices Question 1846
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Hi All
I need your advice on EDI invoices. My company uses EDI for freight invoices. Before EDI data get passed into our accounting system, we have a validation system (outsourced) to check for these invoices, ie the rates, shipment, weight (based on validation criteria).
Question : Is hard copy invoices still required? If we have adequate controls in maintaining the EDI invoices data, are there any major risk if we don’t have the physical invoice?
Please advise…
Thanks
Erika
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I don;t see a need to keep a hard copy of the invoice as long as all of the information that you need is on the EDI invoice. We have several vendors who bill us via EDI and never send paper invoices. That is one of the advantages of EDI is that you eliminate some of the paper.
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Hi - I also agree with kymike
A well controlled electronic retention of information is actually better than paper, (e.g., less cumbersome, you have backup, folks could potentially alter paper copies in an unacceptable way, etc).
Below are key factors in using electronic documents:- Long term retention of EDI transactions
- Capture of Date and Timestamp info
- EDI transactions shouldn’t be subject to unauthorized tampering (e.g., good security, so everything is properly reserved historically)
- Auditors have no issues with the approach
- If there are issues in the approach, another idea is to set up autonomy levels when transactions cross a certain monetary threshhold that hard copies are retained, along with the electronic versions.
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Thank you for the advise.