When E-Invoices Go Wrong: Out-of-the-Box Solution and Key Learnings

Last Tuesday, our team in Poland informed me about a technical issue with our e-archive invoices not being posted to the e-invoice portal. I promptly reported the problem to the outside service provider and classified the ticket as "high priority".

The next day, I had a meeting with the assigned person from the service provider and another in-house contracted colleague to discuss the technical aspects of the issue. Despite our efforts and the support of our third-party IT service provider, we couldn’t resolve the issue that day, which led to a halt in shipments from our Serbia factory.

On Thursday, I started the day early and sent reminders about the urgency of the issue. As the delay continued, I started working on an alternative solution, let's call it Plan B: manually creating e-archive invoices on the portal. This process was slow and prone to errors, but it was necessary.

In the meantime, I reached out to our service providers via email and phone, but to no avail. Finally, I decided to contact the VP of our service provider directly on LinkedIn, explaining our situation and the need for urgent support.

Thankfully, she responded promptly and within half an hour, the issue was resolved. I quickly shared the good news with all stakeholders. This experience was a reminder of the importance of being proactive, thinking out-of-the-box, and using all available communication channels effectively when solving problems.

Key Learnings:

• Always have a Plan B ready.
• Don’t hesitate to use different communication channels.
• Be proactive and solution-oriented.

Above was the long story short. Let me share the long story as well just to keep this personal experience in a written format. Who knows, maybe one day it will inspire me or someone else for more...

***

Last Tuesday afternoon, around 5 PM, I was informed by our team in Poland, who handle our invoicing, that our e-archive invoices created in SAP had not been posted to the e-invoice portal. As is common in today’s multinational companies, when encountering such issues while working with shared service centers and third-party service providers, I reported the problem by opening a ticket. Although I classified it as “high priority”, the first communication for the ticket I was able to open at 5 PM was the next day, Wednesday.

The person assigned to the ticket reached out to me by phone and listened to the situation. We decided to continue with an online meeting with a colleague who could speak the same language when the questions involved technical information. After the meeting we had at noon, I prepared the electronic documents requested via the ticket with the support of our third-party IT service provider with whom we work on a contracted basis. On Wednesday evening, there was a notification that the ticket was being worked on, but since the solution could not be provided, e-archive invoices could not be arranged. As a result, both on Tuesday and Wednesday, shipments stopped and trucks waiting to depart from Serbia factory waited.

On Thursday morning, knowing that this problem needed to be solved within the day and with the advantage of starting the day earlier than our stakeholders in Europe, I sent messages over the ticket reminding them of the urgency of the issue and wrote that we expected support. The lack of response was starting to make me nervous too, so I tried to draw attention by writing one of the messages in capital letters (I am one of those who believe that writing in caps lock in the digital world is rude). As the news that the office-hour started in Europe and the shipment did not start was conveyed to the team managers in the supply chain, the managers of those departments started to reach out and ask about the current situation and started to question alternatives such as reporting the issue to senior managers in my function. Since we needed a technical correction (mapping) to be done by a completely third-party service provider, I stated that there was no need for internal support and worked on the “Plan B”.

My plan B was to create an e-archive invoice by manually entering invoice items line by line from the e-invoice portal. Since the colleague responsible for arranging the invoice did not know Turkish, I first opened the page in English and showed which fields were mandatory and where to enter which information. Although the headings turned into English, he still needed support because the items in the drop-down menu were in Turkish. For example, there was no Germany in the Country menu, instead there was “Almanya” (in Turkish) and our customers had to take note of the Turkish equivalent of their addresses. Similarly, “unit” was problematic. Also, since we were arranging an invoice in foreign currency, he had to go to Turkish Central Bank’s site and get the exchange rate and state it on the invoice. After adding the first invoice together to the drafts, I left my colleague alone with the next invoices. This process was both very slow and very prone to error due to its manual nature. I had one clear thing in mind: I had to reach our service providers who I could not get a response from over the ticket.

First, I sent a group email to the people working from the service provider company whose emails I had access to due to previous reconciliation communications or other technical problems. Then I tried the contact numbers on their website. Unfortunately, customer service was asking for a tax identification number before being directed to the technical team, and after entering this information, a voice recording saw me off saying that I could only reach the technical team by opening a ticket. When I could not provide a solution from these channels I tried, I sent a direct message to the country VP of our service provider on Linkedin with the mindset that “the customer is always right” and wrote that we needed support due to the stop of the shipment and shared the ticket number that was created 2 days ago. Although I don’t think it’s right to classify or position people with their titles, it would be appropriate to continue with this title in this content in order not to put people and companies in a difficult situation. Even though I had never met her physically before, I really reached out to her out of need and thankfully, she immediately responded to my message and asked me to forward the issue to her with a short email. I was hopeful and my hope did not go in vain, less than half an hour later, my colleague who manually entered the e-archive invoices on the portal first wrote that the invoices he sent from SAP were transferred to the portal, and the same comment came from our service provider within minutes. I quickly conveyed the good news to all stakeholders. Then the VP sent a direct message on Linkedin saying that the team informed her that the problem was solved and asked me to confirm. I shared that the problem was solved and that our stakeholders in Switzerland, Poland and Serbia were extremely happy with this situation. I was really relieved.

This experience shows how important it is for us to go beyond traditional solution methods and use our “out-of-the-box” thinking ability when dealing with the difficulties we encounter in the business world. Using communication channels effectively and thinking solution-oriented helps us cope with unexpected situations. The key point of this experience is the value of being proactive and developing alternative solutions when solving problems. When things don’t go well, it is necessary to go beyond traditional methods to find a solution and think differently. In this case, I used both technology (manual invoice creation in e-invoice portal) and personal communication channels (Linkedin) effectively to solve the problem.

In conclusion, we should always continue to search for new and creative solutions. This is definitely one of the keys to success in the business world.