e-Faktura for restaurants: invoices straight from the till

If you run a restaurant or cafe, this has probably happened: a company comes in for lunch, pays, and at the end asks for an invoice in the company’s name. That is the moment the day’s work stops and somebody starts copying data by hand into another program.

This article explains what e-Faktura is, who actually needs it, and what changes when the invoice is issued directly from the system that already holds the order.

What e-Faktura is

e-Faktura is an electronic invoice in a standardised format, exchanged digitally rather than on paper. For a hospitality venue that means an invoice for a business customer is no longer a Word document somebody fills in by hand, but a record that comes out of the system.

An important distinction that often gets muddled: a fiscal receipt and an invoice are not the same thing. The guest at the table gets the fiscal receipt. The company needs the invoice to claim the expense. Plenty of venues have the first automated and the second still manual.

When a restaurant actually needs it

Not every venue. To be concrete:

• You need it if you get regular corporate guests — business lunches, companies ordering for meetings, catering for events.
• You need it if you host parties, weddings or private events where the payer is a company.
• You need it if you have contracts with companies for staff meals.
• You probably don’t need it if you are a small cafe where nearly everyone pays as a private individual.

If you issue two invoices a month, filling them in by hand is a tolerable cost. If you issue thirty, that is several hours a month spent re-typing.

What changes when the invoice comes out of the system

The problem with a separate program is not writing the invoice itself. The problem is that the data already exists somewhere else.

That table’s order is already in the till: the products, quantities, prices, discounts. When the invoice is produced in different software, somebody enters all of it again. Every re-entry is a chance to get something wrong — wrong quantity, stale price, forgotten discount. And an invoice with a mistake comes back and gets redone.

When issuing is part of the same system, the invoice is built from the bill itself. Nothing is re-typed because nothing moves between programs.

The second thing that changes is month end. When invoices and revenue live in one system, there is one report. You are not merging data from the till, a spreadsheet and an invoicing program to see what you made.

What EasyOffer supports

Issuing electronic invoices is part of the system — the invoice is created from the existing bill, with no entry into a separate program. It comes with the plans that include the POS and the admin panel.

If you would like to see how it looks with your own data before deciding, get in touch.

Common questions

Does e-Faktura replace the fiscal receipt? No. The fiscal receipt stays for guests paying as private individuals. The invoice is for the company that needs the expense recognised.

What if I already have an accountant? Nothing changes in their work, except they receive data that hasn’t been reworked by hand. That usually means fewer questions coming back to you.

Do I need new hardware? No. Issuing happens in the same system you already use for orders and bills.