Re: [Proposal]: New schema for Invoices

On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 12:09 PM, Martin Hepp <martin.hepp@unibw.de> wrote:
>
> Thanks - such an entity was indeed missing. A few questions:
>
> 1. With invoice, do you mean a) a receipt of payment b) a document
> representing a payment request or c) the union of both. In other words, how
> is an invoice related to (1) an actual payment, (2) a legal obligation to
> pay a certain amount, and (3) an underlying transfer of rights that causes
> the obligation to pay a compensation?
>

A union of both. One might receive an invoice requesting payment and then a
subsequent invoice with paymentStatus stating the payment was received.



>
> 2. How is an invoice linked to a) http://schema.org/Offer and b) the
> subtypes of http://schema.org/TradeAction, like
> - http://schema.org/BuyAction
> - http://schema.org/PayAction
> - http://schema.org/RentAction
> - http://schema.org/SellAction
> - http://schema.org/TipAction
>
>
> I can imagine invoices without either one, e.g. invoices without offer nor
> transaction for prepayments or advances.
>
> But if the entities exist, they should be linkable.
>


Good point. In many cases, the original Offer is unknown, but if the Offer
or Order is known, there should be a link. I can add the properties
"paymentForOffer" and "paymentForOrder".




>
> 3. I think we should have a method for including a list of items in the
> invoice. One could define a new property "itemsIncluded" with an ItemList
> that links to entities of the type of
> http://schema.org/TypeAndQuantityNode.
>
>
If there is a link to the Offer, do you still need to list the items
separately?



> 4. Currently, the support for modeling tax information in price
> information in schema.org and GoodRelations is pretty simple; we may want
> to expand this part and add it to Invoice, too, because e.g. the ability to
> expose VAT rates and absolute values may be very relevant for European
> users.
>
> 5. Also, we currently have no model for staged payments and financing in
> GoodRelations and schema.org; this will also touch Invoice (image a car
> invoice with a single down payment and four installments with individual
> due dates).
>

Yes, these can get complicated. It may be better to treat each installment
as a separate invoice and link them together.

- Vicki


Vicki Tardif Holland | Ontologist | vtardif@google.com