in practice, business transactions can generally be divided into cash sales and credit sales. Cash sales are generally invoiced when direct collection is made, and the invoice risk is small. However, selling on credit is generally "paying the bill first", which brings difficulties to invoice risk management. Enterprises need to formulate a complete invoice management process to avoid related risks.
Recently, there was a report in Fazhi. com that Sanmen Court in Taizhou City, Zhejiang Province tried a dispute over a sales contract, and the plaintiff (a startup company)' s claim that there was a real processing contract relationship with the defendant was rejected. Another "China Court Network" reported that regarding the payment dispute between Jiangsu Nantong Erjian Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Nantong Erjian) and Xinjiang Chuangtian Real Estate Development Company (hereinafter referred to as Chuangtian), the Supreme Court held that Chuangtian held the invoice issued by Nantong Erjian, but Nantong Erjian did not cite the corresponding counter evidence to prove that the other party (Chuangtian) had not paid the money, so it was determined that the payment had been made.
Sanmen, a startup company, has issued invoices to prove the authenticity of the transaction, which was rejected by the court; However, Xinchuangtian Company only used invoices to prove the payment, which was adopted by the court (the other party had no materials to the contrary). Therefore, no matter how qualitative the court's judgment was, it fully explained the importance of the enterprise to invoice management.
Article 3 of the Measures for the Administration of Invoices stipulates that the term "invoice" as mentioned in these Measures refers to the receipt and payment vouchers issued and collected during the purchase and sale of commodities, provision or acceptance of services and other business activities. Article 21 stipulates that units and individuals that sell goods, provide services and engage in other business activities shall collect money from foreign business operations, and the payee shall issue invoices to the payer. Under special circumstances, the payer will issue an invoice to the payee. According to the relevant laws and regulations on invoice management in China, invoices are also the legal basis for tax authorities to "manage taxes by votes". How to manage invoices well is an important guarantee for enterprises to control tax risks, capital risks and other legal risks.
in practice, business transactions can generally be divided into cash sales and credit sales. Cash sales are generally invoiced when direct collection is made, and the invoice risk is small. However, credit sale is generally "payment after ticket" (except for special business contracts), which brings difficulties to invoice risk management. Enterprises need to develop a complete invoice management process to control related risks. The process is as follows:
1. Sign a transaction contract. Before the transaction occurs (transaction negotiation stage), both business departments (negotiators) need to draw up a transaction contract, which not only restricts the quality of the transaction, but also stipulates in writing the payment method and time, invoice type (tax rate) and invoice delivery time.
1. why should the payment method be agreed? Because, according to the existing business transactions, cash transactions have gradually decreased, and general enterprises have non-cash trading tools. Therefore, in order to avoid the risk of funds and false invoicing, both parties to the transaction should agree on the payment method in the transaction contract: transfer payment. The purpose of this agreement is to ensure that the payment path can be found clearly in the later period. If the payer has to accept the cash transaction, it should also be stipulated in the contract: when receiving the cash payment, the payee must issue a legal and unified "receipt" to the payer.
2. why do you have to make a written agreement on the invoice type and tax rate? Because VAT invoices include ordinary invoices and special invoices, and the VAT rates are 17%, 13%, 11% and 6%, and taxpayers are divided into small-scale taxpayers and general taxpayers. According to the management method of special VAT invoices, only general VAT taxpayers can issue special VAT invoices, and small-scale taxpayers have to apply for special VAT invoices. At the same time, special VAT invoices shall not be issued to individual consumers. Therefore, in the contract, the invoice types and tax rates are agreed, which can avoid disputes between the two parties because of different invoice types and tax rates, which is not lacking in reality.
3. what is the payment time of the contract money? Generally, the payment time can be divided into partial payment in advance before the transaction, payment according to the progress of the transaction, full payment after the transaction, etc. So how to issue the invoice accordingly? Generally speaking, enterprises can issue invoices according to the time when the VAT tax obligation occurs. For example, according to the relevant provisions of value-added tax, the time of value-added tax payment is the day when the taxpayer has taxable behavior and received the sales money or obtained the evidence for claiming the sales money. However, in practice, due to the long reconciliation time, some enterprises confirm the income and declare the value-added tax in the month when the business happens, but the invoice will not be issued until next month or next month, and the invoicing time is not uniform with the value-added tax payment time. Some enterprises in the off-peak season even appear that the invoice amount in the current month is greater than the declared value-added tax amount (the income in the off-peak season is invoiced in the off-season), which requires enterprises to communicate effectively with the tax authorities and manage their tax returns well, which also affects the management of red-ink invoices in the later period.
2. Reconciliation on schedule. It is a necessary financial work for both parties to make reconciliation on schedule before invoicing, especially for enterprises with multiple transactions during the contract period, they must make reconciliation between the two parties to confirm the amount before invoicing. The purpose of this is for both parties to the transaction to agree and confirm the transaction amount, which is also an important evidence for the authenticity of the invoice issued by the payee, and also to prevent the problem of issuing red-ink invoices because the contract amount is not finally confirmed.
iii. issuance and delivery of invoices. It is a common transaction mode for enterprises to pay the bill first. There must be a legal basis for the payee to issue invoices, that is, according to the transaction contract and the successful transaction acceptance certificate (including the reconciliation confirmation certificate of both parties). The invoice stub should be filed with the billing basis for future reference for inspection by the tax authorities.
invoicing enterprises should strengthen the management of invoice issuance application, that is, the invoice applicant is the handling business department, the invoice issuer is the financial department, and the invoice stub is the financial department, so as to prevent the risk of reopening the invoice.
after the invoice is issued, the payee should deliver it to the payer in a special way and ask the payer to fill in the receipt to prevent the risk of invoice loss.
iv. payment settlement. When the payer receives all the transaction contracts, reconciliation confirmations and invoices, it arranges payment. If payment is made in cash, a "receipt of payment" with the seal and signature of the payee is required to ensure the authenticity and uniqueness of payment.
in the financial management of enterprises, "signing a transaction contract-contract performance acceptance-transaction amount confirmation (reconciliation)-invoicing-collection (payment)-invoice stub storage" is a necessary process of "bill first, payment later" transaction. Only by fully implementing this process can we avoid bringing transaction troubles and various risks to enterprises.