This is a beta course, so its structure, chapters, and examples may continue to change.
What Is an Invoice?
An invoice is a tax voucher, and also the key piece of evidence for reimbursement, reconciliation, and defending your rights. The title, tax number, amount, and date are all indispensable.
Definition
A definition is a precise description of what a concept, a term, or an object means. Understanding definitions is the foundation of learning any field, and every concept has its own exact meaning.
Invoice
A written voucher issued by the tax authority or by an organisation or individual that is lawfully authorised to issue invoices, recording the income and expenditure that arise in business activity.
- Title: the full name of the organisation or the name of the individual; for a company it must match the business licence.
- Tax number: a company must fill in its unified social credit code; an individual may leave it blank or give their ID number.
- Issue date: it determines the deadlines for reimbursement and deduction.
- Amount and tax: tax-inclusive or tax-exclusive amount, with the tax rate matching the item category.
- Items / category: should match the real transaction, to avoid being rejected because of a “write-in-anything” entry.
- Asking for a company title “on the spot” for a personal purchase but not giving the tax number, which causes the reimbursement or deduction to fail.
- Issuing business entertainment expenses under “office supplies”, where the mismatch of category is easily rejected in an audit.
- Forgetting to download and back up an electronic invoice, so the original cannot be found at reimbursement time.