It is now more important than ever to make sure that you have a strategy in place in order to stay compliant and avoid exorbitant fines as the deadline of December 31, 2013, approaches. It takes money and effort to swiftly modify and adjust your ERP system and business procedures to satisfy these requirements. Unfortunately, most businesses underestimate the amount of labour necessary to comply with these new standards because they are ill-prepared for the future changes. CFDI will have a significant influence on business and will have an impact on logistics, accounts payable, and accounts receivable.

• The most crucial element of the law is accounts receivable, and many implementations will fail because of it. It will be necessary to make major modifications to outbound invoicing to end customers in Mexico. These changes will have an impact on both your ability to generate a legally acceptable invoice and your ability to collect payments. The outbound process with CFDI is real-time, necessitates extensive SAP system upgrades, and interferes with hip.
• Logistics: The real-time CFDI procedure necessitates the distribution of a PDF version of the approved XML that bears a government signature, unlike the historical batch invoicing processing. Companies must incorporate contingencies into their business processes so that validation doesn’t impede customer shipments by requiring a physical representation of the invoice on the truck, a procedure similar to the Brazil Nota Fiscal regulations.
• Accounts Payable: The law also has an impact on inbound receiving and domestic purchase payment. All supplier XML invoices must be gathered, verified, and stored for a period of five years regardless of whether you are using local resources or have switched to a shared service. The extensive switch to CFDI will significantly impact AP operations in two ways. The computerised XML invoices must be validated in real-time and stored on premises for 5 years, which will first overwhelm the payables employees. The vast majority of businesses have been manually validating invoices. The amount of electronic invoicing will increase by 300–500% for many AP teams, pushing manual efforts to their limit. Second, a management should anticipate receiving a significant number of invalid invoices because many suppliers will be unfamiliar with the CFDI procedure. Companies do not want to accept government incorrect invoices since doing so increases the danger of an audit and has ramifications for tax deductions.

There is no standard SAP solution because every SAP user has customised their price, implemented customer-specific business processes, and upgraded SAP at their own speed. The most challenging task is the required SAP work, therefore don’t forget about it.