Kunming Qualification Agency: Four Steps to Solve the Financial Risk of "Ticket First, Payment Later"

In practice, commercial transactions can generally be divided into cash sales and credit sales. Cash sales are generally invoiced at the time of direct collection, and the risk of invoicing is small. However, credit sales are 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.

There was a report in Fazhi recently. Sanmen Court in Taizhou City, Zhejiang Province tried a dispute over a sales contract and rejected the plaintiff's claim that there was a real invoice processing contract relationship between the plaintiff and the defendant. According to "China Court Network", regarding the dispute over the payment of goods 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 payment, so it was determined that the payment had been made.

The startup company Sanmen has issued an invoice to prove the authenticity of the transaction and was rejected by the court; However, Xinchuangtian Company only proved the payment by invoice, which was adopted by the court (the other party has no materials to the contrary). Therefore, no matter how qualitative the court's judgment is, it fully illustrates the importance of enterprises 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 receipts and payments issued and collected in the purchase and sale of commodities, provision or acceptance of services and other business activities. Article 20 stipulates that units and individuals that sell goods, provide services and engage in other business activities shall collect money from foreign 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 of invoice management in China, invoices are also the legal basis for tax authorities to "govern 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, commercial transactions can generally be divided into cash sales and credit sales. Cash sales are generally invoiced at the time of direct collection, and the risk of invoicing 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 the transaction contract. Before the transaction (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 the payment method and time, invoice type (tax rate) and invoice delivery time in writing.

1. Why should we agree on the terms of payment? Because, judging from the existing commercial 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 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 clearly found in the later period. If the payer must accept the cash transaction, it should also be stipulated in the contract that the payee must issue a legal and unified "receipt" to the payer when receiving the cash payment.

2. Why should the invoice type and tax rate be agreed in writing? Because VAT invoices include ordinary invoices and special invoices, the VAT rates are 17%, 13%, 1 1% and 6% respectively. 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 invoices for value-added tax shall not be issued to individual consumers. Therefore, stipulating the invoice type and tax rate in the contract can avoid disputes between the two parties because of different invoice types and tax rates, which is not lacking in reality.

3. When is the payment time of the contract money? Payment time can generally 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 corresponding invoice? 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 payment time of value-added tax 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 their income and declare value-added tax in the month when the business occurs, but the invoice will not be issued until next month or the next month, and the time of invoicing is not uniform with the time of value-added tax payment. Some enterprises in off-peak season even appear that the invoice amount in the current month is greater than the declared value-added tax amount (off-peak season income is invoiced in the off-season), which requires effective communication between enterprises and tax authorities, completes the tax declaration management, and also affects the management of red-ink invoices in the later period.

Second, reconciliation on schedule. It is a necessary financial work for both parties to reconcile on schedule before invoicing, especially for enterprises with multiple transactions during the contract period, which must be reconciled by both parties to confirm the amount before invoicing. The purpose of this is to let both parties agree and confirm the transaction amount, which is also an important evidence of 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.

3. Invoice issuance and delivery. Paying the bill first is a common trading mode for enterprises. The invoice issued by the payee must have a legal basis, that is, according to the transaction contract and the successful acceptance certificate of the transaction (including the confirmation certificate of reconciliation between the two parties). The invoice stub shall be filed together with the basis for invoicing for future reference for inspection by the tax authorities.

Invoice issuing enterprises should strengthen the management of invoice issuing 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 to prevent the risk of invoice reopening.

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.

Fourth, payment settlement. When the payer receives all the transaction contracts, reconciliation confirmation and invoices, it will arrange payment. If you pay in cash, you need a "receipt" signed by the payee to ensure the authenticity and uniqueness of the payment.

In enterprise financial management, "signing a transaction contract-contract performance acceptance-transaction amount confirmation (reconciliation)-invoicing-receipt (payment)-invoice stub warehousing" is the necessary process of "invoicing first, then payment" transaction. Only by fully implementing this process can we avoid bringing transaction troubles and various risks to enterprises.