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SAP Greece Localization -Tax Devices

ELSOP Consulting Group is an authorized reseller of ELMI Systems S.A., one of the main manufacturers of TAX Devices in Greece. Elsop Basis consultants have been certified by Greek authorities for installation and maintenance of TAX devices combining those activities to the necessary SAP Basis related activities.

What is it about

According to legislation that was recently issued (Article 10 of Law 3052/2002 and ministerial decisions, the so-called POLs, 1234/2002, 1257/2002 and 1284/2002), all companies that use computers to print documents for goods transfer and billing, are obliged to validate every printed document by using some new electronic tax devices, specially designed and manufactured for this purpose. These devices have a Greek acronym that in Latin characters is EAFDSS and in free translation means, “secure tax sign device”. In English we shall use the term DSD (acronym for Digital Sign Device). Before a tax document is printed, it must be sent to the DSD as an ASCII text file. The DSD then applies a Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA-1) to the received data and produces a 77 character unique string that is called the document signature. This signature must finally be attached to the bottom of the document before sent to printer. DSDs are connected to PC serial ports, that generally can be located anywhere in the corporate LAN or WAN. From now on we will call a PC with a connected DSD on it, a DSD host. On top of that there is a legal requirement to produce 2 ASCII text files for every document printed this way. The 1st file contains the ASCII representation of the printed document, and because its name ends to _a.txt, it is called the “A-File”. The 2nd file (also ASCII) contains the document’s signature, and because its name ends to _b.txt, it is called the “B-File”. Additionally there is a “CFile”, ending to _c.txt, containing the signature of all signatures that were issued during a day; this is the so-called “Z closure” signature.

All these files have to be stored and kept safely for a certain period of time (defined by law), in order to be available for tax audit. The law defines 2 approaches for solving the above-mentioned issue: 

Type-A solution

The H/W vendor provides both H/W (DSD) and S/W (irrelevant to SAP), that complies and implements all the legal requirements. This S/W is an autonomous application, named the DSD driver, which runs outside the SAP system, on the computer where the DSD is connected (DSD host). In this case the only thing that has to be changed in SAP is the document’s printer definition (basis task). Some modifications may also be required regarding the SAPscript  layout, e.g. ensure enough space for the DS to be printed, etc (developer tasks). 

Type-B solution

The S/W house has to modify its application in order to be able to co-operate with one of the approved devices and comply with all legal requirements.