[Visual: Screen shows text - "Exchanging eInvoices between Xero & MYOB". We see a Xero staff member introducing Simon and Harry.]
Xero Staff member:
Hi everyone, I'm Fiona and today we're going to show you a quick demo of how eInvoices are exchanged between Xero and MYOB via the Peppol eInvoicing network. To help me today, I'm joined by Harry D'Souza, who is an Associate Product Manager at MYOB, and Simon Foster, who is Xero's General Manager of eInvoicing.
In order to use eInvoicing in Xero or MYOB, businesses need to register their business using their respective software. By registering, you are essentially telling the Peppol network where you'd like your incoming eInvoices delivered. Simon, would you mind please sharing your screen and walking us through how Xero customers register to receive eInvoices in Xero?
[Visual: We see a full screen video, demonstrating the Xero interface as Simon explains the steps below]
Simon Foster:
Thanks Fiona. Now, before you start, head to your organisation settings and make sure you have it populated with your NZBN and your legal trading name as it appears on the NZBN register. Let's do that now. I'm going to go up to the top here. We're going to go to settings, go to organisation details. We'll see we have Lucky Designs here. There's the NZBN. I'm going to put that in and that's it. We need to make sure those 2 match.
Once that's done, head to the business menu and click bills to pay. We're now going to click the burger menu and then set up eInvoicing. Xero has pulled through the NZBN from the organisation settings we reviewed a few seconds ago. Remember, your NZBN acts as your unique identifier, kind of like your phone number. Now click ‘search for business information’. You'll be presented with your business details. Check everything is accurate and then click 'Verify these are my business details’.
You'll now be asked to provide the details of a business representative. This person will just need to act as a point of contact on the Peppol network. It's not shared with the network itself, it’s only available to Xero. Once you're happy with that, you'll need to agree the terms and conditions and then click ‘Complete registration’. We'll go put that in there and that's it, you're all done.
Now you can see that Lucky Designs is registered on the Peppol network and you can see the NZBN that has been used. Now I'll hand over to Harry who will walk through the registration process within MYOB. Harry.
[Visual: We then see a screen of the MYOB interface - as Harry explains the process.]
Harry D'Souza:
Cheers Simon. The registration process for MYOB customers is just as simple. As soon as you log into MYOB, you will land into your dashboard. From here, you can go to your settings on the upper right corner of the screen, and then go all to the very end to eInvoicing. In this tab in here, you will be able to read more about the benefits of using eInvoicing, and read a few other supporting materials, and even a video that'll tell you more about it.
And then once you're ready to get started, just click on the ‘get started’ button, and then you will be taken to this screen where we basically ask for your business name the same way that it appears on the NZBN register, your NZBN, and then your postal and address details. Once you are ready, just fill up this information in here and click on ‘register for eInvoicing’. And then you will be taken back to your MYOB dashboard with a success message that says that you are ready to go.
In MYOB, registering for eInvoicing allows you to both send and receive all in one journey. So that means that once you are signed up, you're ready to go.
Xero staff member:
Great, thank you both very much for that. It looks very easy indeed.
We all know that the beauty of eInvoicing is that it's interoperable, meaning as long as your customer or supplier is registered and using Peppol-approved software, you can exchange eInvoices. Next up, we're going to show you just how easy this is. Simon is going to send an eInvoice from Xero, to Harry, who is using MYOB.
[Visual: We then see Simon’s screen as he demonstrates the process]
Simon Foster:
Firstly, I need to enter Harry as a new customer contact. Harry's company is going to be the Ministry of MYOB Invoicing and obviously the contact person is going to be Harry D'Souza. As I mentioned before, your NZBN acts as your unique identifier. So I'm going to head to the bottom of that page, you see at the bottom we have a space for NZBN and Harry's NZBN is already in there. There it is. Let's close that.
Now I'm going to create a new eInvoice. So the first thing we're going to do is hit ‘New’ / ‘Sales Invoice’. You can see it's already populated in Harry's details. This is actually our classic invoicing page. We also have something called new invoicing. In order to send an eInvoice, you do need to use that new invoicing page. So I can just swap between it at the bottom here.
And here we have the details of new invoicing. So the first thing I'm going to do is come to the bottom and click this toggle so that I say ‘Send it as an eInvoice’. You'll then note a slight change just here in the screen. This is special formatting that allows us to add some extra details like for example a purchase order number. So we'll do PO colon and sometimes large businesses or government require you to add extra details that you might not use when you're sending to other small businesses and this is how you do it here. So we've got a PO number, I'll put in 12345, well 567X. Otherwise this is exactly the same as you would send an invoice normally. In this case I'm going to send some 99 red balloons to Harry at $1.50 each and that's all I need to do.
If I'd wanted to attach some files, I can attach files down here and say exactly as you would do when sending an invoice over email and I'll hit ‘approve’ and ‘send’. If I want some payment details for bank account, I've got a little bit of detail there on there, agree again, hit ‘send’, it's now verifying all the information on the eInvoice and off it goes. What I'll now be able to do is just go to the bottom of the page here and see when it's been sent.
So what you can see, that's been sent as an eInvoice, we've got the NZBN, we've got a little bit of information on the payment details and the fact it's gone today, the 12th of December. I'm now going to hand across to Harry to show how my eInvoice is received inside MYOB. Harry.
[Visual: We then see a screen of the MYOB interface - as Harry explains the process]
Harry D'Souza:
Thanks Simon. In MYOB, we use the in tray to handle documents. And this is also where the eInvoices will appear once you receive them. So that means that Simon's eInvoice should be waiting for us in there. And here it is, invoice number 24. From here, after previewing the information that is contained in this invoice, I can either choose the ‘reject eInvoice’ option, in case there is something incorrect with it, maybe the number of items, the value, or something like that. Or I can go ahead and turn it into a bill, meaning that I accept this eInvoice as correct. Both of these options will create responses that the sender will be able to see in their account, so they know about the workflow of the management of this eInvoice and I am able to go either way from there.
For the sake of this example, what I'm doing in here is that I am accepting this eInvoice and turning it into a bill in my account. And what you can see is that the screen in here is unchanged from current MYOB behaviour. We pre-fill as much information as we can based on the eInvoice that is coming through. But you would still have to add just a few other pieces of information before being able to actually go ahead and save and respond.
Clicking on this button means that you want to turn that eInvoice into a bill, so it'll disappear from your in tray and will become an actual bill for you to pay. It's important to note that Simon will also be notified that you have accepted that eInvoice. I'm going to go full circle and show you how you can send an eInvoice from MYOB.
And pretty much the same way as in Xero, here in MYOB, you have to have a contact card for the customer with the NZBN information in it. So if I go to my contact screen, I should be able to see the Xero eInvoicing customer card in here with the NZBN pre-populated and the Xero eInvoicing contact card is the one we will be using to send an eInvoice to Simon for the 99 red balloons. Then go to sales and then ‘create invoice’ so that I can eInvoice Simon for the same 99 red balloons. So by picking the Xero eInvoicing contact card in here, and then shifting to the service and items view, I should be able to put here the red balloons, choose an account and then the 99 units at one dollar just because my balloons are slightly cheaper, and then pretty much the same way as in Xero, I should be able to put a PO number in case I need one, even select some notes in there.
In regular old invoicing, you would come to the save button in here and then create a PDF that you would then provide to your customer. But with eInvoicing, you can now use the send eInvoice button. That as soon as you click on it, you should see this pop up appear, where you can review information about your eInvoice, even select a template if you have one, and attach any supporting documents for that eInvoice.
Once you are happy with the information that you see here, you can click on the Send eInvoice button, and then MYOB is going to create that eInvoice and send it to the network so that it can be delivered to your customer. As soon as that happens, you should see a success message here at the top. And then if you go back to that eInvoice you just sent, you can scroll all the way down to the activity history where you can see a few different steps about the workflow for that eInvoice and right now it’s showing as sent.
So I’ll hand back to Simon, so we can see how that eInvoice appears in Xero.
[Visual: We then see Simon’s screen as he demonstrates the process]
Simon Foster:
All incoming eInvoices appear as draft bills in Xero. So I'm going to head across to ‘bills to pay’ to look for Harry's eInvoice. Go in here and we're interested in the drafts. And you can see there we are, reference 002 and here are the 99 red balloons and that's all come through with all of the details there, tells us it's been received on eInvoicing, and you can see we've got the PDF attachment there as well. I've already set up this contact with our supplier code to automatically code it. If I want to use that, I can just click inside and you'll see it says ‘cost of goods sold’. All I need to do now is either approve it or I can save it if someone else is the approver. It's that easy.
Xero staff member:
And there we are. eInvoicing is really that easy, and as you can see it can really save you serious time entering bills if more of your suppliers started sending them. Special thanks to Harry and Simon for demonstrating both Xero and MYOB experiences today. You can find out more information on how eInvoicing works on Xero Central which is Xero's support database, or on MYOB's help centre.
Thanks for joining us. Have a great day, everyone.
[Visual: Screen shows text - "Faster. Smoother. Safer. Take the next step, for Kiwi business".
Already there are more than 10,000 businesses registered to receive eInvoices, including 50 government agencies, and hundreds of accountants and household names.