# General Business Category > Accounting Forum >  Pastel old versions and new versions

## Martinco

I understand that for your accounting system ( invoices) to be compliant to the new laws certain information needs to be printed on the invoice.
What information is this ?
Not so long ago Pastel punted their new version as to be compliant with the new law. What is different ?

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## Dave A

One of the trickiest issues is the Tax Invoice _vs_ Copy Tax Invoice. It seems SARS is determined that there should be only one "Tax Invoice" floating around, whether it be hard copy or in electronic format. This means all kinds of trick stuff, either in printing hardcopies or encoding electronic invoices (normally in PDF format). And as far as I know, Pastel is the only accounting software that does it at this point.

Personally, I think it's a poorly considered regulation which is a total waste of time. In this age of pretty fantastic photocopiers, any "printed on plain paper" invoice (which let's face it most are nowadays) can be copied so well I defy anyone to identify the original copy. If people are going to defraud SARS by fiddling extra copies of invoices through, this measure is certainly not going to stop them.

There is another problem that goes with this.

You provide the client the orginal Tax Invoice.
They lose it and now want a copy.
You send a Copy Tax Invoice, but they only accept (and pay on) original Tax Invoices.
Now what?

Sure, you can pass a credit note for them to lose too and generate a new Tax Invoice.
But what if the first Tax Invoice *hadn't* actually disappeared? 

This sort of thing would be waaaay harder to pick up in an audit than multiple copies of the same tax invoice.

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Martinco (03-May-11)

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## Neville Bailey

For what it's worth, here is an extract from Pastel's help documentation, regarding this issue:

Electronic Documents

In South Africa there are certain requirements for businesses who wish to issue tax invoices, debit notes and credit notes in electronic format instead of the traditional paper version (hard copy).


Customer Acceptance
The customer or intended recipient of a tax invoice must give written consent that they are prepared to accept electronic documents. A checkbox has been included on the processing tab on the customers account that you need to select once your customer has given written consent.Electronic Document Format
All PDF documents emailed from Pastel are 128 bit encrypted.Marking documents as Computer Generated
The emailed document will constitute the original tax invoice, credit or debit note. Copies extracted from the system will display the words computer generated copy tax invoice, computer generated copy credit note or computer generated copy debit note.Audit Trail report of all Electronic Documents
An audit trail report can be generated that will display all emailed tax invoices, debit notes and credit notes. To run the report, select View...General Ledger...Tax...Audit Trail of Electronic Tax Documents from the main menu.

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Martinco (03-May-11)

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