This autumn we sat next to a few accountants and watched how they handle e-invoices (e-qaimə) on Azerbaijan's tax portal. We were there to improve our own tool, but we ended up learning a lot ourselves. What surprised us most: the bulk of the time doesn't go on accounting at all. It goes on opening, copying and checking.

Here's what we saw. Every example comes from real databases and real invoices; I've just left the company names out.

Where the time goes

The tax portal lets you export the list of incoming invoices to Excel. The catch is that the file only has the header of each invoice: seller, date, amount, VAT. Which goods, how many and at what price aren't there. To see the line items you have to open every invoice separately.

If you get five invoices a day, that's fine. For a wholesaler getting 40–50 a day, the maths is simple: two or three minutes per invoice adds up to roughly two hours a day. And many companies don't process them daily, they do the lot at month end, so those hours pile up into a single week.

And an invoice entered in a rush at month end is exactly where mistakes creep in.

No tax ID, no supplier

In one company's 1C database we checked the cards of 21 suppliers. Only seven had the right VÖEN (the Azerbaijani tax ID). Ten had the field left blank. And the card of one of the biggest drinks suppliers carried another company's VÖEN altogether.

Nobody notices this day to day, because people look suppliers up by name. It surfaces later: in a reconciliation statement, in the VAT return, or when the same supplier ends up with two or three cards in the database.

The rule is simple: find the counterparty by VÖEN, not by name. When you create a new card, copy the VÖEN from the invoice rather than typing it in.

Goods or a service?

Whether a line counts as goods or a service depends on the product code the seller picked. If the seller got it wrong and you copy it over without checking, your document is wrong too: goods get booked as a purchased service, or a service ends up received into the warehouse.

The quickest check is the unit of measure. A line with a service code but measured in kg, litres or metres is almost always goods. A goods code with "hours" or "days" is a service. Don't decide anything from "pieces": both goods and services are invoiced in pieces. We invoice our own services that way.

A van isn't stock

It looks like a small slip, but it's one of the costliest. Among one company's invoices was a cargo van. On the invoice it arrives as an ordinary goods line, so in 1C it's easy to book it into inventory. I'll admit that during testing our own software did exactly that at first, and we had to teach it to catch this case.

A car, a machine, a server or any expensive equipment you'll use for more than a year is a fixed asset. Its accounting, depreciation and tax treatment are completely different. When you see a vehicle or expensive equipment on an invoice, stop and ask one question: did we buy this to sell or to use?

Same day, same amount

Two invoices arrive from the same supplier on the same day for the same amount. First thought: it's a duplicate, delete one. Sometimes it is. But we also came across cases where these were two separate deliveries.

Look at the series and number. If the numbers differ, they are two separate invoices and both belong in the books. The trouble is that many databases don't store the invoice number on the 1C document. Then the only way to spot duplicates is by date and amount, which leads straight to the mistake above. So always record the invoice number on the 1C document.

A corrected invoice isn't a new purchase

When a seller corrects an invoice, a corrected version appears on the portal. Book it as a new purchase and the same goods come in twice. When a correction arrives, find the original document and fix that instead.

Where's the contract number?

The portal has no separate field for the contract. The seller types it into the "Əsas qeyd" (basis) note, or leaves it out entirely. Yet an acceptance certificate or a price agreement protocol needs the contract number and date, so the accountant goes digging through folders every time. The very first comment from the accountant who tested our tool was about this: a good share of invoices simply had no contract number.

Keep the contract numbers of your main suppliers in one place and ask sellers to put the contract in the basis note. It's one phone call, and it saves you trouble all year.

In short

  • Process invoices daily, or at least twice a week, not at month end. Checking ten invoices is always easier than checking two hundred.
  • Look counterparties up in 1C by VÖEN, and check the VÖEN on old cards once.
  • Use the unit of measure to tell goods from services. For expensive, long-lived items, ask the fixed-asset question.
  • Store the invoice number on the 1C document.

What we built

These observations turned into TechLab e-Qaimə, a Chrome extension. The accountant signs in to the portal with their own ASAN İmza, picks a period, and incoming or outgoing invoices land in one Excel sheet with every line item. From there it also prepares PDFs, acceptance certificates, price agreement protocols and payment invoices for the selected documents. It flags invoices with no contract number and goods/service mismatches up front, and it changes nothing on the portal.

Tool or no tool, the rules above still hold. If you have questions about e-qaimə and 1C, get in touch.