Alya Books

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    Guides for Alya Books and UAE e-invoicing

    Add a company or person

    Create a buyer or supplier contact with TRN, Peppol ID, address and payment terms so invoices fill in correctly.

    Contacts are the buyers you invoice and the suppliers whose invoices you receive. A contact can be a company or an individual; you enter the name that must appear on the tax invoice.

    Steps

    1. Go to Contacts and click Add Contact. The dialog has three tabs (five when you edit an existing contact).
    2. General:
      • Type: Customer, Supplier or Customer & supplier. These are the default words; if your organization changed them under Settings → Workspace → View → Terminology (for example to Client and Vendor), the choices follow. See Customer and supplier terminology.
      • Company or person: leave the switch on Company and enter the Legal Name and Legal form (LLC, FZE, sole establishment…), or switch to Natural person and enter first and last name.
      • Name (Arabic) for Arabic and bilingual PDFs, and Trading Name if different.
      • Customer number: type one or click the wand to take the next number of the customer series (template and counter under Settings → Outgoing invoices → Document Numbering). Category is a free text such as wholesale for filtering.
      • TRN: 15 digits, or leave empty for a buyer that is not VAT registered. Only digits are accepted (spaces and dashes are dropped) and a counter shows how many of the 15 you have entered. For a customer whose Country is not the UAE the field is called VAT number and takes that country's number, letters included (for example DE123456789).
      • Peppol ID: the fixed prefix 0235: is shown in front of the field; enter the 10-digit TIN, which is the first 10 digits of the TRN (a pasted full TRN or 0235:… value is shortened for you). Click Use TIN from TRN to fill it from the TRN above. The shield button checks whether the participant is registered in the Peppol network. The small Scheme picker next to the label is 0235 for UAE contacts; for a customer abroad it is empty until you pick the customer's own scheme (for example 9930 for a German VAT number), or paste the whole ID such as 9930:DE123456789. See Peppol IDs for your contacts.
      • Legal registration: the type (Trade licence, Commercial licence, Emirates ID, Passport or Cabinet decision), the Number, and the Licensing authority for a licence or the Issuing country (2 letters, for example IN) for a passport. It is required on out-of-scope invoices and their credit notes and sent with every e-invoice when filled. Draft invoices take the current value when saved; issued invoices keep the value they were issued with.
    3. Address: Street, Additional Address, City, Emirate (pick from the list), Postal Code. The country defaults to the UAE.
    4. Additional: Contact Person, Email (the recipient when you send by email or send a payment reminder), Phone, Website, Payment Terms (days), Price list, Currency and internal Notes.
    5. Click Add Contact.
    6. Open the contact again with Edit for two more tabs: People (several contact persons with position, email, phone; one is the Primary contact and is shown in the editor; Receives invoices marks who gets documents by email) and Addresses (delivery and billing addresses that can be picked in the invoice editor).

    Good to know

    • Picking a contact in the invoice editor fills the buyer block, the TRN and the due date from the contact's payment terms. Currency defaults to the contact's currency.
    • Changing a contact's TRN or Name updates its draft and validated invoices, so validating again picks up the new details. A value typed differently on one invoice is kept there, and invoices already submitted never change.
    • If the contact has no Email, sends go to the contact person marked Receives invoices (the primary one first).
    • You can also create a contact directly from the editor's recipient picker with New contact.
    • Search the list by name, customer number, TRN or email; filter by type and category. Edit and Delete are in the row menu. A contact used on invoices or received invoices is deactivated instead of deleted, so those documents keep it.
    • A supplier is created automatically (stored type seller) when an incoming invoice arrives from an unknown TRN.
    • In the editor, the primary contact person is shown under the buyer with a shortcut to use their name as the salutation; saved delivery addresses appear above the delivery fields.
    • Accountants, admins and owners can add contacts; viewers cannot.

    Still stuck? Contact support