Colombia - DIAN

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Introduction

The DIAN in Colombia stands for Dirección de Impuestos y Aduanas Nacionales (National Directorate of Taxes and Customs). It is the government agency responsible for managing and overseeing tax collection, customs operations, and facilitating international trade.

Electronic invoicing in Colombia is mandatory and operates on a real-time clearance model whereby every invoice must receive a unique identifier called a CUFE (Código Único de Factura Electrónica) issued by the DIAN.

Businesses in Colombia must be registered with the DIAN and have an active RUT (Registro Único Tributario) to issue electronic invoices.

In this guide we’ll discuss how Invopop can help you comply with e-invoicing regulation in Colombia.

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Prerequisites

In order to complete this guide in a live Invopop environment, you will need:

• Supplier details, including company name, RUT, address, and municipality code issued by the DIAN.
• Customer details for B2B transactions, including name, RUT or international ID, address, and municipality code national transactions.
• Line and item details, including quantity, price, description, and taxes to apply. Colombia can be complicated, as a single invoice may need to apply up to three different value added and retained taxes.
• Have authorized “Plemsi”, the provider used by Invopop, to issue invoices on the supplier’s behalf in the DIAN, and followed the specific onboarding process for each supplier (details below).

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Authorization with the DIAN

Invopop has partnered with Plemsi to issue invoices in Colombia (DIAN). You have the option of either using Invopop’s Plemsi billing account or create your own and provide your own credentials.

This guide will walk you through the steps necessary to set up the workflows that will let you issue GOBL documents in Colombia using the Plemsi provider.

Please refer to the docs of the GOBL’s Colombia Tax Regime to learn about the specifics of Colombian GOBL documents and to get examples.

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Sandbox Setup

Plemsi provides a sandbox environment that you can use to test the issuance of invoices and credit notes end-to-end without fiscal or legal consequences. If you wish to use this environment, please contact us via Slack or support@invopop.com so that we enable your Invopop workspace to use it.

Once enabled, you’ll need to setup a workflow like the one described in the section below.

There are a few limitations of this environment to bear in mind:

• There’s only one supplier enabled. Its tax code is 9015852843.
• There’s only one series enabled for invoices (SETT) and another one for credit notes (NCTT). Moreover, those series are shared and, to avoid collisions, we’ll provide you with a specific range for you to use (e.g. SETT-123xxxx)

Your test invoices will need to use the supplier’s tax ID code and series above.

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Production Setup

You can invoice using the Plemsi provider on behalf of multiple suppliers. For each supplier, these are the steps you’ll need to follow:

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Step 1: Authorise Plemsi to issue invoices on your behalf

First, the supplier’s legal representative must authorise the Plemsi technology provider to issue invoices on your behalf in the DIAN.

The following guide explains how to do it, but note that you’ll have to skip the last few steps in the Plemsi user interface. We’ll take care of them for you later in this guide:

📘 Habilitar documentos electrónicos DIAN

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Step 2: Get a billing numbering range authorisation

Next, the supplier’s legal representative must get a DIAN authorisation for the billing numbering range you wish to use in your invoices. This guide explains how to do it:

📘 Solicitud de Autorización de Numeración de Facturación

Please note that these authorisations have a limit and an expiration date. If you need to renew an existing one, this other guide explains how to do it:

📘 Solicitud de Habilitación de Numeración de Facturación

The DIAN will provide you with an 1876 form at the end of the process. Keep it at hand; you’ll need it in the following steps.

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Step 3: Authorise Plemsi to use the numbering range

Now, the supplier representative must give the Plemsi technology provider permission to use the numbering range when issuing their invoices.

The following guide explains how to do it, but again, note that you’ll have to skip the last few steps in the Plemsi user interface. We’ll take care of them for you later on:

📘 Asociar una resolución o numeración DIAN

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Step 4: Create and configure your Plemsi account

Now you need a Plemsi account created and configured. We have to do this for you, so please contact us via Slack or support@invopop.com.

We’ll ask you to provide us with all the data necessary to set up the account, including the fiscal data of the company as it must appear in your invoices, and some information from the previous steps.

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Step 5: Create a workflow

At this point, you’ll be ready to set up the workflow to issue invoices:

1. Sign in to Invopop’s Console at https://console.invopop.com.

2. If you have multiple companies, choose the one you want to use at the top left.

3. Go to “Workflows” and create a new workflow.

4. Add a first step using the “Series Enumerator” provider. The simplest setup here would be to use a “Dynamic” series. That will allow you to use the same workflow for both invoices and credit notes. Make sure to configure it according to the parameters of the authorised numbering range.

   Note that this configuration assumes you’ll set the proper series value in the GOBL invoices or credit notes you send to the workflow.

5. Add a second step using the “Plemsi” provider. Nothing to configure here.

6. Add a third and final step using the “PDF Generator” provider. You can configure a logo to appear at the header of your invoice PDFs, the language and some formats.

This is the minimal workflow you can use to issue invoices in Colombia. You can now add other optional integrations to, for example, send an email with the invoice, notify another system with a webhook or upload the invoices to a Dropbox account.

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And you’re done!

Congrats, the setup is complete! You can now use each of the two workflows you created to issue invoices and credit notes in Colombia.