Flaw in invoices

[bluedude]

Hi,

 

As an entrepreneur that uses Prestashop already for many years I discovered a few flaws which make it hard to use Prestashop according to local laws.

The invoice system

It is a great system but it has a serious problem. An invoice is never "frozen" to a certain state. What I mean with that is the following.

You would think after the PDF is generated it will never change again and a user can always download exact the same PDF version from his account page over and over again. However, this isn't the case!!!

When a shop owner decides to change his logo or even a footer message the PDF gets generated again when a user decides to download the invoice through his account page. That means he can have two versions of the same invoice. The one he originally got and another one with a different footer or other stuff the merchant changed.

Many customers try to get to their invoice months later and a merchant could have changed settings in these months.

Local laws in the Netherlands do not allow to have two versions of the same invoice so this causes a problem.

You don't believe me? Generate an invoice and save it. Change your logo or something else and download the same PDF again (which should be frozen as final). It is different which shouldn't be the case if an invoice is final.

 

[space_journey]

Netherlands I have been. Best country i the world!!!! I understand why good law 

But unfortunate France not as good i have seen. That is why flaws :( :(( France simply do not care I tell you!!! very lasy and arogant!!

 but we can only ask Presta to look at netherlands to improve!!! then we ave better invoice!!

 

[tuk66]

On 4/3/2019 at 10:04 AM, bluedude said:

Hi,

 

As an entrepreneur that uses Prestashop already for many years I discovered a few flaws which make it hard to use Prestashop according to local laws.

The invoice system

It is a great system but it has a serious problem. An invoice is never "frozen" to a certain state. What I mean with that is the following.

You would think after the PDF is generated it will never change again and a user can always download exact the same PDF version from his account page over and over again. However, this isn't the case!!!

When a shop owner decides to change his logo or even a footer message the PDF gets generated again when a user decides to download the invoice through his account page. That means he can have two versions of the same invoice. The one he originally got and another one with a different footer or other stuff the merchant changed.

Many customers try to get to their invoice months later and a merchant could have changed settings in these months.

Local laws in the Netherlands do not allow to have two versions of the same invoice so this causes a problem.

You don't believe me? Generate an invoice and save it. Change your logo or something else and download the same PDF again (which should be frozen as final). It is different which shouldn't be the case if an invoice is final.

 

I can ask my supplier to send me a fixed version of the invoice in real world. I think it is quite usual approach.

Now, only some values are stored for every invoice. Its content is not fully immutable. One can improve the invoice template and variables replace by constants - like the logo, the seller address and so on.

[bluedude]

Hi tuk66, this is not really the problem actually. It's weird to see that not many people understand the problem while this is legislation in many countries. Once an invoice has been generated and sent to a customer it is not allowed to change anymore. However, that's impossible in Prestashop. The minute you change your address and phone for example in the footer and a customer would download his invoice months later again he would get a changed invoice. This is forbidden in NL for example.

So the point is not changing logo etc., that should still be possible, but being able to freeze the customer PDF in a certain state when it's sent, that's the point. Below I will provide a sample.

New order

Customer A places an order and received an invoice on April 1. All fine, het gets a PDF and it's perfect.

Supplier needs to change address and some descriptions in invoice fields

On april 29 supplier moves offices and needs to change the address in the footer of the invoice and also changes some texts in the translations of the invoice. No problem, all possible.

Customer lost his email with invoice PDF

On May 5 (after supplier changed his address etc.) customer A discovered that he lost his email of April 1 with the invoice. He goes to my account and downloads the PDF again. And then to his surprise het gets the PDF with all changes of the supplier which is NOT CORRECT. He should receive his old invoice received on April 1 by email. This is a legislation issue. Now he has two invoices with the same number but different information on it. The tax office will ask, which one is the right one and how can we trust you have not changed more.

THIS is the big issue Prestashop has.

 

Cheers.

 

[tuk66]

OK, you are probably right. So the PDF invoice should be created only once and stored in the file system. Every other request should load the saved file. It sounds good.