Credit Notes: Written evidence for commission withdrawals

[Cyboman]

For accounting and according to laws almost worldwide we urgently need written evidence for withdrawals. By using IP.Commerce and IP.Downloads, we allow our customers to become contributors. Successful contributors can withdraw the money they earned with commissions for customer purchases.

One way to perform this action legally correct is to require a valid invoice of each customer. Problem: most of the customers don't know at all how a valid invoice looks like and what applies for their entrepreneur status. And it will take ages for personal conversations until everything is correct.

The second possibility is to generate all credit evidences automatically, save all credit withdrawal notes in the customer/client area like "manage purchases" for download and send them to customers via email as soon as the withdrawal is marked as complete. 

Like invoices for customer purchases, we need some credit withdrawal notes, that have

• official header and footer,
• date,
• a unique, chronological withdrawal number,
• applied VAT/TAX settings... It should also have some text field for written default text. It must be printable. According to the billing address of the customer, correct VAT/TAX has to be applied (alternatively options for "tax-free" and "tax-free with international TAX-number entry).

Here is another post I already made:

IMPORTANT NOTICE! Every financial withdrawal request and the transaction itself requires evidence. Every financial transaction request (all of them!) and the transaction itself requires one. We, as a marketplace system provider, as well as the customers require these evidences for VAT authorities that must be in a legally correct form. It has to look similar as an invoice, but it is a totally independent "reverse invoice" which is called like "credit withdrawal evidence note" (of course translatable). These evidences should be integrated directly into the IPS suite as it would be very time-consuming to process this action on a completely independent system and transfer data manually. Please add this feature. Thanks.

[Cyboman]

Is it true, that nobody worldwide, who operates with IP.Commerce / IP.Downloads / Paid Files & Withdrawals, requires a written official withdrawal invoice for his contributors?

No one requires this feature? Or no one uses these apps to do paid files contributor commerce outside the USA, f.e. europe?

I can't believe it.

Please see, how Amazon handles their affiliate partners (which in a way is the same as being a contributor, as both are a digital service): they send you a monthly payout notice about your affiliate revenue and then they pay directly. It's all automated. Because nobody could otherwise handle any high load contributor commerce efficiently.

And it's a legal requirement for both contractors (at least in some european countries), to have valid evidence for any payouts.

If I should be wrong or there are other legal ways to overcome this requirement, then please tell me, too.

I already stated above, that all contributors could send their own invoices to the community administrator / accountant before any payouts could take place. Which wouldn't be financeable. I doubt that highload commerce contributors are handled this way.

Is there anybody out there, who actively does contributor commerce via paid downloads? If yes, then please respond with your handling.

We can also go on with the legal / tax effective discussion in another thread in Peer-to-Peer if required. Here I'm asking politely and mainly for this important accounting feature.

Thanks a lot to everybody offering help who is in the same situation.

[opentype]

4 minutes ago, Cyboman said:

No one requires this feature?

I do, but I have basically given up getting through with these kinds of requests with US companies. It only changes once the companies open a branch in Europe and are required to have these kind of documentation themselves – as your example with Amazon (operating from Luxembourg) shows. 

[Cyboman]

I'm convinced that IPS would drum up massive customers paying for IPS solutions in europe if they handle our basic EU requirements for financial transactions.

It's not a world to do, but essential and belongs to the core. 

EU basics mainly consist of having all (different) transactions with unique numbering, extra fields and printable sendouts, some checkboxes for terms and other flexible extra notices before "pay" and "register" buttons, some special TAX settings, handling of email addresses and bulk mailings (this is not a legal advice! ).

I also know that third party provider (external developer) can help doing these tasks for money (and I already spent very high amounts for such customizations). But IPS, please notice that a lot customers will be unable to go with IPS without a complete solution. Every core change you are doing to your commerce and downloads makes me hire developers to update proprietary modifications (as I'm talking about core functionality, not simply a hook!). It's a never ending story and wastes a lot other ressources.

I advise to start a new IPS Subforum named "legal user considerations". This would be very helpful to gather all (international) legal requirements in a common place, where IPS as well as plugin authors and new customers can have a look at and keep some basics in mind for new developments. Sometimes it will be easy to consider wishes For many new IPS users and as the internet evolves, law becomes more and more important. If any commercial competitor in the EU has a community with unconfigured legal requirements, you just close his service with your lawyers and generate high invoices to get rid of the competitor! That's the truth!