NetSuite’s James Chisham on SEA’s e-invoicing maze, data residency and who pays when AI gets it wrong

James Chisham, Vice President of Product Management and International Strategy at Oracle NetSuite, discussed the e-invoicing landscape in Southeast Asia and the challenges of compliance during a keynote at SuiteWorld in Las Vegas. E-invoicing mandates, such as Malaysia's MyInvois and Singapore's InvoiceNow, each have unique formats and deadlines.

NetSuite's approach, called an "extensible core," allows customers to continue using NetSuite Next while handling each jurisdiction's requirements in the background. This single point of entry and support for multiple mandates gives NetSuite an advantage over specialist e-invoicing providers. NetSuite's localisation efforts in Southeast Asia prioritize markets with significant customer bases, such as Singapore and the Philippines, but plans are in place to cover additional countries like Indonesia and Vietnam in the future.

For AI-driven implementation tools like SuiteExpress, the core technology remains consistent across countries, but the local plumbing, such as statutory configuration and tax mandates, differs. SuiteExpress currently has limited availability in the US, but improvements to the netSuite Tax package will address integration issues in Southeast Asia.

Regarding liability for AI-generated transactions, NetSuite aims to prevent errors through validation before transactions leave the platform, similar to Mexico's approach where transactions are validated through the tax authority's system.