E-invoicing

Your e-invoicing is not going through? We find out why.

Implementation, remediation and integration of e-invoicing flows for companies operating in Francophone West Africa — formats, transmission, validation, connection to your systems.

Check my e-invoicing setup See how we work

At a glance

The subject: Issuing and receiving electronic invoices: the format produced, its validation, its transmission and its acceptance by the recipient.
What we do: We identify why an invoice is rejected, correct the format or the transformation responsible — the FNE and e-MECeF normalised invoices and the region's equivalent regimes — and put the flow back into production.
Who it is for: Companies issuing or receiving invoices at volume whose existing flows fail, in part or entirely.
What we do not do: We do not sell invoicing software and we do not give legal or tax advice. We work on the technical side of the flows, on your existing systems.
Starting point: A diagnostic: the cause is established and quantified before anything is corrected.

You are probably here for one of these reasons

Your invoices go out and come back rejected, with an error code nobody can read.
Your output format does not match what your recipient expects.
The same invoice is accepted on one channel and refused on another, with no clear reason.
You need to issue structured invoices and your ERP only knows how to produce a PDF.
A deadline is approaching and nobody can say whether your flows are ready.
The project started, then stalled in the testing phase.

E-invoicing

What we take on

We work on what exists. The goal is that an invoice leaves, arrives and is accepted — not that you replace your information system.

Structured invoice generation
Producing from your ERP the normalised format the tax authority expects — the FNE and e-MECeF normalised invoices and the region's equivalent regimes — with the data actually required, not just the fields that are easy to fill.
Rejection remediation
Taking the refused invoices, identifying the rule that fails, fixing the source rather than the symptom, and replaying the flow.
Pre-transmission validation
Checking structural and business compliance before sending, with an error message your finance team can act on.
Invoice lifecycle
Handling statuses and responses (submitted, rejected, accepted, paid) and pushing them back into your systems instead of leaving them in a portal.
Cross-border flows
Handling the cases where sender and recipient do not fall under the same rules or the same transmission channels.
Stalled project recovery
Picking up an implementation that stopped halfway: where it stands, what is still missing, getting it to production.

How an engagement runs

01
Diagnostic
Mapping the real flow and identifying the failure points.
02
Fix
Reworking the mappings, transformations and validation rules involved.
03
End-to-end testing
Validation on real cases, including the edge cases that were failing.
04
Go-live
Controlled cutover, monitoring of the first flows, correction of residual gaps.
05
Handover
Documentation of the flow and its rules, so your team stays autonomous.

The formats and concepts involved

Each one is here because it determines whether your invoice goes through.

Normalised invoice: The format the country's tax authority expects, and the code or marking that authenticates it: FNE in Côte d'Ivoire, e-MECeF in Benin, and the equivalent regimes in Senegal, Togo, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.
UBL 2.1: The XML structure widely used for invoices and orders.
UN/CEFACT CII: The other major invoicing XML syntax, alongside UBL.
SYSCOHADA: The OHADA accounting framework: the chart of accounts an invoice has to feed, whatever the file syntax.
E-reporting: Transmission of transaction data, separate from the invoice itself.
Business rules: The checks beyond the schema: amount consistency, VAT, identifiers, mandatory mentions.

Anumerik works on the technical implementation: mappings, data transformations, connectivity and integration. We do not provide legal or tax advice — your own advisers remain your reference on how the rules apply to you.

Frequently asked questions

Do we need to change ERP to issue electronic invoices?

Rarely. In most cases the ERP already holds the necessary data; what is missing is the layer that extracts it, puts it in the right format and handles the responses. That is exactly what we build, on your existing ERP.

Why are my invoices rejected when the PDF is correct?

Because validation does not look at the PDF, it looks at the structured data accompanying it. A perfectly readable document can fail on a missing identifier, a VAT rule not honoured, or a field in the wrong format.

Is Anumerik a legal or tax advisory firm?

No. We are a technical provider: mappings, transformations, connectivity, integration. On interpreting the rules and your own obligations, your legal or tax advisers remain the reference.

Sources

References to the specifications themselves. Anumerik is not affiliated with any of these bodies and does not interpret their texts.

Facture Normalisée Électronique (FNE) — official platform — DGI Côte d’Ivoire
e-MECeF — normalised invoicing — DGI Benin

The logical next step

Fixing one broken process usually reveals another, right next to it.

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EDI & EDIFACT

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