In the automotive industry, suppliers often do not send invoices to their customers. Instead, the customer remits a self-bill for the shipment received. The self-bill document includes the details about received shipments and the amount due to the supplier for these shipments. The amount also reflects any deductions for defective or damaged parts, and any other related credits due. In this process, the customer decides the payable amount instead of relying on an invoice from the supplier.

The self-bill is remitted to the supplier, which processes and matches with the unmatched shipments.

If the supplier notes any discrepancy between the self-bill and the shipment record, the customer must be notified within a predefined period to make the correction when needed. Sometimes the discrepancies must be written off as losses by either the supplier or the customer.

The information remitted on the customer’s self-bill can contain different details, based on the specific industry. These details can include customer bill-to, PO numbers, RANs, part numbers, shipper numbers, and others. The customer remittance document must always include an amount payable to the supplier, which may be adjusted for defective or damaged parts and any other credits due.

The following figure shows the difference between the traditional customer invoice process and advanced self-billing process.