Achieving Global Invoice Compliance via Coupa: What to Know in 2024 

The international invoice compliance landscape continues to evolve in 2024, with new legal and tax implications for companies operating in multiple countries. Most notably, Poland, Romania, and Saudi Arabia will be joining Italy, Mexico, and more in the global move toward pre-clearance invoicing models, which require all vendor invoices to gain government validation before submitting to buyers. In 2025, France will also shift to this model. 

Thankfully, leading cloud-based Procure-to-Pay (P2P) platforms like Coupa provide robust support and Compliance-as-a-Service (CaaS) solutions for 52 countries. Coupa is proactively planning for these country-specific changes, and more like them, as pre-clearance invoicing gains momentum worldwide. 

Getting Started With International Invoicing Adoption 

When procurement teams roll out a P2P system globally, leaders must account for three key components: 

1. A country’s spend and corresponding benefits. 
2. The invoicing model of the requisite country/countries. 
3. How their system of choice does or does not support that particular model.  

There’s no singular metric or easy way to capture this information across multiple P2P vendor options and countries. System implementation partners like CrossCountry Consulting can lead the supplier enablement effort, technology selection, and deployment process to ensure all options are properly vetted against the scope, approach, and priority of the implementation project.   

On a practical level, countries under consideration can be aggregated into the following four buckets, allowing for cleaner comparisons and categorizations of invoicing models and their Coupa system:   

1. Non-clearance model countries where Coupa provides a presentation and can legally create invoices. 
2. Clearance model countries where Coupa is fully integrated/compliant with those countries’ defined databases or partners. 
3. Non-clearance model countries where Coupa provides limited/partial support but cannot legally create invoices. 
4. Clearance model countries where Coupa does not fully support. 

Procurement teams can prioritize the approach they’d like to take based on, among other things, their ability to realize benefits, resource availability, and geographic considerations. Though Coupa supports many clearance countries (e.g., India, Italy, Mexico, etc.), additional discussion internally and with suppliers is still required to ensure the new process is fully understood and tested by all parties. 

Invoice Compliance Considerations Before a Global Rollout 

When preparing for significant changes to invoicing processes, leaders must proceed with caution. In addition to the legal, tax, and compliance consequences involved in a new invoicing process in different countries, there are also downstream effects on internal policies, change management, and technology interoperability. 

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Here are some of the primary points to keep top of mind before, during, and after rollout:   

1. Even if a country is well-supported by Coupa, additional supplier communication and testing support will be needed, particularly for clearance model countries. 
2. There may be other non-regulatory complexities that must be considered and accommodated, even if not legally required. Due to rapid currency fluctuations, this is often the case in countries with unique supplier arrangements.  
3. Different companies (or business units within the company) may currently address country-specific regulations through different methods. There’s rarely a one-size-fits-all approach that suits all parties. A Coupa deployment is a great opportunity to align on a single approach even if certain aspects of the process must remain outside of Coupa. 
4. Be thoughtful about how the Chart of Accounts in Coupa is configured and how tax registrations are assigned. This will impact suppliers’ experience with the Coupa Supplier Portal (CSP).  
5. Anticipate country language needs when completing the supplier data design strategy. 
6. Consider third-party tax validation software to ensure invoice compliance efforts happen in parallel with any other software used to assess tax based on the service, usage location, and entity tax status.  

With every new release of Coupa functionality, today’s investment in creating country-specific templates and capabilities within Coupa increases the total return on investment in the future. Given Coupa’s extensive track record of support for the transition of Italy and Poland to a clearance model, it will continue to surpass peer platforms as governments around the world modernize invoicing and tax reporting practices.   

To bring more spend under management (SUM) into Coupa and maximize international ROI, contact CrossCountry Consulting.