Black Friday is, for many companies, one of the best sales periods of the entire year. At the same time, the increase in demand brings particular challenges, including in terms of fiscal management. Certain problems end up hindering operations or even causing bigger impacts on the business, such as fines and penalties.
This is what Hugo Ramos, CEO of Oobj, a national reference in solutions for Electronic Fiscal Documents (DF-e) and other digital tax demands, tells us. “Every year, we notice some common mistakes that affect companies in all sectors, both in e-commerce and physical stores. Being prepared to face these situations can prevent them from escalating into bigger problems”, he explains.
Thus, the professional has selected the main fiscal setbacks that can affect companies on Black Friday 2024, and what to do to reduce associated risks. Check below:
- Duplicate fiscal notes
Whether due to connection issues, SEFAZ processing problems, or even internal instability in the company’s system, it is possible to generate duplicate fiscal documents.
“When there is duplication, the fiscal closing differs from the financial closing, leading to undue tax charges. Additionally, if the fiscal messaging does not identify this error in authorized fiscal notes, the generation of notes by the ERP will be incorrect, resulting in fines and penalties for non-payment of taxes or data omission”, details Hugo.
To avoid headaches, it is worth having a specialized tax system that can control the duplication of invoices and check for repeated data, in order to cancel invalid documents. Furthermore, it is also important to ensure the audit of authorized electronic tax documents, to be sure that the financial and tax closing will be done without errors. With this, the obligation to issue invoices will be consistent and the risk of penalties reduced.
Furthermore, another direct impact of duplication is on inventory control. With incorrect inventory, the company may face fiscal and logistical problems, such as wrong orders, delivery delays, and inadequate purchasing planning.
- Failure to communicate with SEFAZ
Communication failures between the tax system and SEFAZ is a problem in itself, as it can increase the authorization time for issuing invoices and closing each sale. In a cascading effect, customers at the checkout line need to wait longer to be served, which is especially tricky during Black Friday.
To prevent this from happening, it is important to monitor the availability of SEFAZ, which is automated by certain tax management systems. Many also have a feature that spontaneously identifies moments when it is necessary to enter or exit contingency mode, where the issuance is not immediate: the customer receives an invoice that is not valid until communication with SEFAZ is reestablished.
“With the right tool, contingency issuance is automatically activated whenever necessary. Upon restoring communication with SEFAZ, the fiscal messaging software must be able to reprocess, resend, identify duplications, and request authorization for all fiscal invoices issued in this format,” says the CEO.
- Contingency Issuance
Although solving one problem, contingency issuance can create others. With a high volume of invoices, it can be difficult to manage the number of documents issued and rejected. Therefore, the company may miss the deadline to send to SEFAZ.
For example, the customer may look up the invoice at SEFAZ and not find it because the access key has not been validated yet. Consequently, the consumer then has the possibility to contact PROCON. Therefore, to avoid risks like this, attention is needed during the resend after the contingency to identify the rejected invoices.
“Once again, this is a feature facilitated by cutting-edge fiscal management systems. It is also worth keeping the XML of all invoices, including those issued in contingency, to register the sale and attempted issuance,” suggests Hugo.
- Incorrect NCM on the invoice
The Mercosur Common Nomenclature (NCM) aims to control and identify the tax on products. Incorrect NCM data in the invoice filling can result in rejection of the issuance and the authorization of issuance with the wrong code, leading to incorrectly paid taxes. If an error is found in the code, the tax office checks the latest entries and charges the difference in tax rate, with fines and interest.
Therefore, it is essential to update the NCM codes database that the company uses in its daily operations. If the NCM is missing, the invoice will also encounter problems and be rejected. Therefore, it is necessary to be aware of the classification of goods to avoid this type of failure.
“In situations like this, if the merchant receives a product with the incorrect NCM code, they should provide the correct code to their supplier to avoid fiscal penalties,” concludes Ramos.
Above all, it is important to note that with the significant increase in sales on Black Friday, it is crucial that the system is resilient or can process high volume quickly. This is essential to ensure efficient operation and the success of sales. During this period, the number of transactions increases exponentially, requiring the system to handle this demand without compromising performance or causing interruptions. This helps to avoid delivery delays, queues at the cash register, and, of course, customer dissatisfaction.
