The law says that all phisical or legal persons performing income producing activities are required to provide an internal numbering system for the financial accounting forms used. That means, at the beginning of each financial year you need to define numbering schemes for invoices, proformas, receipts and notices that you will issue in that year to your clients.

The numbering schemes contain three types of denominations:

-Prefix (optional): Useful for better invoices organization, if you issue monthly invoices, on various services and products and / or at different branch offices. For example Prod or Serv (if the invoice issued is on a product or service); or UL or MH (if the invoice issued is in Ulm or Munchen branch office).

– Number (mandatory): it can start with any number you want (once this parameter is defined, the document numbers are given automatically by the system in sequential order).

– Suffix (optional): here you can put, for example, the year you issued the invoice, so you can find it easier then; or if you also have multiple products, services and multiple branch offices, then you can put in the prefix to the product / service and in the suffix the abbreviation of the county where the branch office is located.

– ‘Sepparator’ refers to the character (sign) you want to put between the prefix, number and numbering scheme (for example a short line, a point, a dash, etc.).

Here are some examples of complete invoice numbering schemes with prefix, number and suffix:

– HOST-100-UL (representing invoice 100, issued on the web hosting service, from Ulm branch office);

– SOFT-100-2012 (representing invoice 100, issued on the software service in 2012);

– MH-100-2012 (representing invoice 100, issued from the Munchen branch office in 2012).

What you need to remember is that:

– Defining a number is mandatory, while the prefix and suffix are optional and you can use them to better organize your invoices on the category that interests you the most: service types or products, branch offices , years or any important criteria for your business.

-To be able to issue an invoice, a proforma, a receipt or a notice to a client, you must first define a numbering scheme for each.

Find out here how to define invoices, proformas, receipts and notices numbering schemes.