E-Invoicing in Argentina with ARCA (formerly AFIP): Integrating It into Your ERP

In Argentina invoices are electronic and must be authorized by ARCA, the tax agency that replaced AFIP. There are three ways to issue them: enter each document by hand in the Comprobantes en línea service on ARCA's website, use a commercial product that already includes the integration, or connect the company's own management system directly to the e-invoicing web services.

The first option works while volume is low. When a company invoices several times a day, entering every sale twice (once in the internal system and once on ARCA's website) adds up to hours of work and discrepancies that have to be reconciled later.

How the integration works

The connection with ARCA has two parts that work together:

• Authentication (WSAA). The system identifies itself to ARCA with a digital certificate tied to the company's tax ID (CUIT) and gets an access ticket that expires after a few hours. The system renews it automatically.
• Invoicing (WSFE). With that ticket, the system sends the document data: type, point of sale, customer, amounts and VAT. ARCA validates it and returns the CAE, the code that turns the document into a valid invoice, along with its expiry date.

All of this takes a second or two. For the person invoicing, the job comes down to confirming the sale: the system builds the PDF with the CAE and the QR code the regulations require, stores it and can email it to the customer.

What you need to get started

1. A tax ID login (clave fiscal) with the required security level to manage digital certificates and points of sale.
2. A digital certificate generated for the system and authorized for the e-invoicing service on ARCA's website.
3. A point of sale enabled for web services. The points of sale used in Comprobantes en línea cannot be used for the integration; a new one has to be registered.
4. Testing in the homologation environment, ARCA's sandbox, where documents are issued without tax validity before going live.

The development team handles the technical side. The certificate and point of sale are registered by the holder of the tax login or their accountant, following a step-by-step guide.

What a good integration takes care of

Connecting to ARCA is the well-known part. What makes the difference is everything around it:

• The right document for each customer. The system chooses invoice type A, B or C based on the VAT status of the company and the customer, and fills in the customer's details from their CUIT by querying ARCA's registry.
• Credit and debit notes linked to the original invoice, to cancel or adjust without manual calculations.
• Gap-free numbering. If the internet drops or ARCA does not respond, there can be no skipped numbers or duplicate invoices: the system has to retry and check the last authorized document before issuing a new one.
• VAT ledger and reports generated from the same documents, ready for the accountants.
• Foreign currency and exports. Invoices in US dollars with their exchange rate, and export invoices for customers abroad, which use a different ARCA service.

Electronic Credit Invoices for suppliers to large companies

When a small or mid-sized company invoices a large company above the threshold set by the regulations, it must issue a Factura de Crédito Electrónica MiPyME, an electronic credit invoice with its own acceptance process and payment terms.

If the management system already supports that document, the collections team can track the status of every invoice without checking them one by one on ARCA's website.

Mistakes to avoid

• Not tracking certificate expiry. Certificates expire, and if nobody renews them in time the system stops invoicing overnight.
• Not planning for regulatory changes. ARCA updates its requirements from time to time; in recent years it added, for example, reporting the buyer's VAT status and showing the VAT included in invoices to final consumers. A well-maintained integration is updated without stopping operations.
• Mixing testing and production. Testing in production creates valid documents that then have to be cancelled with credit notes.
• Keeping only the PDF. It is worth storing the data ARCA returned (CAE, expiry and result) so any document can be rebuilt.

Add it to your current system or switch systems?

It depends on how your current system is built. If the company has its own system that works well, e-invoicing can usually be added without replacing it. If sales still live in spreadsheets, it usually makes more sense to solve both at once with a management system that includes invoicing from day one. Our article from spreadsheets to a management system walks through that switch.