Monday, half past nine. The phone rings in administration: it’s the cleaning company that serves two of your locations, and they politely ask when the August invoice will be paid. Overdue for three weeks. No one had seen it: it arrived in the inbox of a coordinator on vacation, who forwarded it to a colleague, who placed it in a folder called "to be paid".
Supplier invoices make no noise until they are overdue. In a cooperative or a network with multiple locations, they arrive from different channels, to different people, for different services, and their management often depends on someone's memory. In this article, we will see where passive invoices come from, how to collect them in one place, how to decide who sees what when there are many locations, and how to keep track of payments and deadlines without parallel folders.
Where Supplier Invoices Get Lost
A 0-6 structure buys more than it seems: food supplies or catering services, diapers and hygiene products, materials for activities, maintenance, cleaning, utilities, staff training. With three or four locations, suppliers become dozens, and each has its own payment terms.
The problem is almost never the payment itself. It’s everything that comes before: knowing that the invoice has arrived, understanding which location it refers to, checking that it corresponds to what has actually been delivered, remembering when it needs to be paid. When this information lives in personal email boxes, shared folders, and post-it notes on the monitor, just one absence or a role change can cause something to fall behind. And the delay is paid for in relationships with suppliers, sometimes in interest, almost always in lost time reconstructing.
Passive Invoices Today: Almost Always Electronic
A passive invoice is simply an invoice you receive, instead of issuing it. Since electronic invoicing became mandatory among Italian operators, almost all supplier invoices travel as XML files through the Revenue Agency's Exchange System. From January 1, 2024, the obligation also applies to suppliers under the flat-rate scheme, who were previously partially exempt: the small artisan who fixes the garden fence now sends you an electronic invoice just like the large supply company.
There are still some special cases, such as foreign suppliers, which need to be managed separately with your accountant. But the rule is clear: the invoice arrives in electronic format, linked to the VAT number of the recipient. And it is precisely this that allows them to be collected automatically instead of chasing them.
A Single Arrival Point: the Purchasing Section
In Easy.School, passive invoices received with the VAT number of the branch appear in the administrative area, in the Purchasing section. There’s no need for someone to forward or upload them: they arrive there and stay there, with their original file.
The newly arrived invoices that have not yet been processed are in the To be recorded tab. This is, in fact, your to-do list: everything inside still needs to pass through you. When you record it, the invoice leaves the queue and becomes part of the purchase history.
To not have to think about it, you can choose to receive a notification via email when a new passive invoice arrives. This is not a detail: it means that the cleaning company’s invoice does not wait for someone to accidentally open the management software, but is visible on the same day.
More Locations, One or More VAT Numbers: Who Sees What
In cooperatives, the typical situation is one of these two: each location has its own VAT number, or multiple locations invoice with the same one. Easy.School manages both, because for each branch you can decide with which legal entity to invoice and whether or not to receive passive invoices.
- Receiving enabled. Passive invoices received with the VAT number of the branch are visible in the Purchasing section of that branch.
- Receiving disabled. This is the recommended option when managing many structures with the same VAT number but you don’t want that information to be shared at every location. Invoices are viewed by those who need to see them, not everyone.
In addition, there are roles and permissions. The Purchasing section is a feature that can be enabled or not for each profile: the central administration sees it, the branch coordinator can see it if they are the one checking the deliveries, educators, normally, do not. It’s a simple way to balance two needs that often clash: centralizing payments and allowing those on-site to control what has actually arrived. If you want to delve deeper into organizing multiple locations, we discussed it in how to manage multiple nursery locations with a single management system.
Recorded Payments and Upcoming Deadlines
Receiving invoices in order is half the work. The other half is knowing what you have already paid and what is about to expire. In managing passive invoices, you can record payments made and keep track of upcoming deadlines, so the question "have we paid this?" finds its answer in the management software and not in the memory of whoever was in the office that day.
Some habits make this control really useful:
- Record the payment when you make it, not at the end of the month. A bank transfer recorded the same day is reliable information; one reconstructed thirty days later is an estimate.
- Check the deadlines for the next two weeks once a week, always on the same day. A few minutes are enough, and no supplier has to call you to remind you.
- Report disputes immediately. If a supply has arrived incomplete, those on-site should mention it before the invoice is paid, not after.
The result is an overview that previously required a manually kept spreadsheet. And as with issued invoices, a single source of numbers is worth more than two sources that don’t match: we have also seen this when discussing cost centers and separate projects.
The Accountant and the XML Archive
At the end of the month or the end of the quarter, the accountant asks for the purchase invoices. Downloading them one by one is the most tedious part of administrative work, and also the easiest to get wrong.
From the To be recorded tab in the Purchasing section, you can download a ZIP archive with the XML files of the passive invoices, even those you have not yet recorded. Choose a date range, up to a maximum of three months, and generate the file: you receive an email with the link to download it at the main address of the license. Inside, you find the XML of each invoice and the corresponding receipt.
Alternatively, you can create an account for the accountant, with visibility limited to the administrative part. They can download what they need, when they need it, without access to the logbook and educational areas. Privacy remains where it should be, and you step out of the intermediary role.
A Routine That Holds Even When People Change
The true value of all this is seen during transition moments: August vacations, maternity leave in administration, a new coordinator arriving mid-year. If the process lives in the habits of one person, it leaves with them. If it lives in the management software, whoever arrives finds the queue of invoices to be recorded, payments already made, and upcoming deadlines.
For a structure with multiple locations, a simple routine is enough: the email notification for new invoices, a weekly check on registrations and deadlines, the download of the XML archive for the accountant at each period closure. Three repeated actions, no folder called "to be paid".
In Summary
Supplier invoices now almost all arrive in electronic format, and it is an advantage only if they end up in a specific place. Collecting them in the Purchasing section, deciding for each branch whether to receive them and who can see them, recording payments, and regularly checking upcoming deadlines transforms a job filled with chasing into an orderly control. Tax and accounting choices remain to be shared with the accountant: the management software gives you the data in order, at the right time.
Do you want to keep supplier invoices, payments, and deadlines in the same place as fees? Try Easy.School for free.
