Overview
Tesla was entering the Taiwan market for its energy product in December 2023. To enable the business, Tesla must follow the local e-invoicing regulations which give local tax authorities detailed insight into business transactions.
Project Info
I delivered Tesla's first energy product e-invoicing automation & integration.
■ Date: November 2023 - December 2023 (2 months)
■ Users & Stakeholders: Sales Operations, Financial Operations, Local government, Local e-invoicing agency, certified installers, end-customers
■ Tools: Jira, Confluence, Sequence Diagrams, Process Flow Diagrams
■ Technologies: SQL, Splunk, API integration
Achievements
▌$__M Revenue: Enabled $Millions in revenue for Tesla Energy products in the Taiwan market in Q1 2024
▌90% improved efficiency: The automation helps the sales operation team save ~90% of the time in creating e-invoices.
▌90% improved efficiency: The automation helps the sales operation team save ~90% of the time in creating e-invoices.
Problem
Though the local Taiwan e-invoicing broker provides an application for generating e-invoices, Sales Ops (key stakeholders) suffer from the time and effort of manually inputting the transaction details. The manual process is time-consuming and prone to human errors.
Value Proposition
▌Integration: Integration with upstream (order system), downstream (accounting system), customer-facing (partner portal), 3rd party e-invoicing broker to make the automation happen.
▌Accuracy: Accurate invoicing to comply with financial regulations and for audit purposes. All sales transactions must be properly documented and can be verified during internal or external audits
▌Efficiency: Automation can free the business stakeholders from tedious manual work.
Product Planning
Sequence Diagram of invoicing integration
▌Understand business requirements: I gathered business requirements in various functions, from sales operations, ordering, and accounting pain points to local-specific tax rules and e-invoicing methods.
▌Sequence Diagrams: The integration can be quite complicated with many systems coming into the picture. I created sequence diagrams to visualize how systems interact with one another. It also clearly presents how the e-invoicing process differs from the regular billing process.
▌3rd party API integration: With a clear picture of Tesla's business processes, I held meetings with the overseas 3rd party e-invoicing vendor to clarify specifications for integrations. Furthermore, I turned the scattered information into detailed specifications for the engineering team.
Solutions
▌Internal Billing: With the billing automation implemented, once the order reaches the "release" status in the upstream system, the invoicing and e-invoicing are triggered automatically. The product category, product code, unit price, quantity, tax amount, and other related accounting data are published to Kafka and then consumed by the downstream accounting system.
E-Invoice PDFs are provided on the billing portal for users (SalesOps, FinOps) to download. API is also provided to the customer-facing products; hence, customers and partners can view and/or download their invoices.
Demonstration of a Taiwan local e-invoice (left) and powerwall (right)
▌E-Invoicing & External Audits: The Tesla billing engine connects to the local e-invoicing broker via API. This integration allows us to report transactions within the local market to the government correctly and comply with the local tax rules.
Tesla's official X post announcing the Powerwall launch in Taiwan
Billing and invoicing play big roles during a product launch. It ensures the revenue from product sales is accurately and timely recorded. It further enables tracking of sales performance, helping to gauge the immediate success of the product launch.
This billing initiative also provided solutions for complying with local financial regulations and for audit purposes. It ensures that all sales transactions are properly documented and can be verified during internal or external audits, reducing the risk of financial discrepancies.
