AIFE (Agency for Financial Information of the State) speaks to us!

Since January 1, 2012, the State is obliged to receive all invoices from its suppliers electronically. To meet this need, the portal Chorus Invoices has been set up.

Since 1 January 2017, any public entity (state, local authority, national public institution) is, in turn, obliged to issue and receive all invoices electronically. AIFE has developed a shared solution: Chorus Pro, a unique and free point of entry to meet these needs.

As of July 2016, Chorus Pro has made it possible to secure the implementation of the obligation for all players by 2017. It takes into account the organizational diversity of public entities.

The dematerialized billers sent to the State, local authorities and their respective public institutions will follow the following mandatory progressive schedule:

2017: Large companies and public persons
2018: Mid-size enterprises
2019: Small and Medium Enterprises
2020: Micro-enterprises

If you are in one of these cases, CHORUS Pro will become one of your primary concerns.

In this regard to properly address your project there are some key questions you need to ask yourself.

In the paragraphs below we will answer the questions that you must have in order to better approach in a simple way the transition to CHORUS Pro.

Whatever your size or activity, the questions below are for you:

1 – Understanding how CHORUS Pro works

In fact CHORUS Pro is not WHO! But what .

CHORUS Pro is the system that the State has set up to exchange all the commercial documents with you. Today only the bill is impacted. This simplification of the invoice processing will reduce the costs related to the invoice. We talk about dematerialization of invoices.

The dematerialisation of invoices is a vector of mutual gains, for the State as well as for its suppliers. It allows the reduction of costs for the company (printing and mailing) and the elimination of manipulations of paper documents. It also leads to a reduction in processing times, and therefore delays in payment, and the guarantee of delivering invoices to the State. The portal « Chorus invoices » also allows state suppliers to track the progress of the processing of their invoices, at any time and free of charge.

It is necessary to understand how the CHORUS Pro platform works and to choose how to access it. Remember to ask yourself about:

the different access modes and their functionalities;
the technical prerequisites to be mastered;
the specific vocabulary used in the solution.

This phase is essential as it will condition your understanding of the platform and help you decide which deposit mode to choose.

2. What invoice filing format should I use?

This choice is already defined without you knowing it because it depends on criteria which constitutes your company:

Volume invoices
Number of your customers and suppliers
Size of your company

These three main criteria will tell you which theoretical mode of deposit you must choose. Then comes the capacity and human resources that you can allocate to this new task. These other parameters will lead you to choose between the following modes:

ENTERING THE PORTAL: This mode has the advantage of having no internal development to perform, so no changes to your organization or information system. However, each invoice must be entered manually. This mode remains effective for government suppliers with a small annual invoice volume of less than 100 invoices per year

DEPOSIT OF INVOICE ON PORTAL IN PDF FORMAT: This mode makes it possible to have a minimum of development as to the transformation PDF of the only invoices which will be deposited quite easily on the PORTAL in FREE access. It is suitable for companies with between 101 and 10,000 invoices a year.

DATA PROCESSING EDI (EDI): This mode will address the largest volume is over 1000 invoices in the year and will be virtually mandatory because the other modes can not support volumes on the one hand and On the other hand, you may spend hours or whole days doing invoice entry or sending PDFs to the portal. Your information system will be automatically connected to that of AIFE which will make transparent the sending of invoices, secure and fast.

3. How do you tame EDI?

Now that you have found your way of sending invoices and you have realized that you have to go through the EDI stage, you now have to size up your project as much as possible.

For this you need a TODO list that will serve as a railway of your future EDI project

This task list or requirement statement must be done in a serious and orderly manner to avoid future process errors and incompatibilities between your system and AIFE.

The key of 3I will be your advisor for the expression of need:
REGISTRATION ON CHORUS Pro

Register on the portal of Chorus Pro
Opt for a deposit mode. Do not forget to download flow examples, XSD schema or XSL style sheets.

INTEGRATION OF YOUR DATA AND GOOD INFORMATION

Gather business services within your organization to streamline data that will be emitted such as mandatory data, business rules in your billing, naming, compression or duplicate invoices in your systems.
Validate catalogs, directories, product codes. It is also an opportunity to have all your product data checked since they must correspond exactly to what CHORUS Pro expects. In this case, invoices will not be invoiced. processed.
As a reminder, the identity and mandatory data of your company or those of your client must be entirely accurate for the CHORUS Pro listed integration to be validated. Remember to check the following information beforehand: Sirets, EJ and SE * codes,

USER INFORMATION

All these efforts will be profitable if you focus on the training and information of the new processes in your invoice management system. The training will allow your employees to become familiar with and become efficient on the different operations accessible from the portal CHORUS Pro and the information will have to be formulated to your customers and suppliers so that it can work with according to an EDI mode.

* EJ and ES: Legal commitment number, number corresponding to the order number and the performing service. It is important to have the correct order number to avoid getting into « reject mode ».

4. Set up the IDE with an operator

EDI implies a functional internal organization, a dedicated infrastructure, a pre-established architecture. All these prerequisites have a cost of setting up and running that can dissuade many companies. Nevertheless, the EDI market presents many EDI operators who according to your needs will present you formulas adapted to your entry in EDI. He will guide you best for a connection to the portal CHORUS Pro.

Beyond the implementation that may seem complex, CHORUS Pro is your best ally for billing with the state. Transparency and simplification of all this implementation can be brought by an operator who will be able to evolve with you according to your rhythm, as well from an operational point of view, functional but also in a conduct of the change of internal process.

ICD can answer all your questions. A team of experts is at your disposal to carry out with you your expression of need until the connection with CHORUS Pro