9 Januari 2025: Please note that our Expedited Payment option will remain suspended until further notice. (Please ignore any references to that option when reading paragraph 8 below).
Index
- Invoicing Policy.
- How to determine the invoice address.
- How to submit an invoice.
- Invoice requirements.
- Payment detail requirements.
- What to do if my payment details change?
- Procedure when an invoice is incorrect.
- Payment terms.
- Payment methods.
- Questions?
1. Invoicing Policy
This policy contains the information required for translators and interpreters to submit an invoice to Snelvertaler BV, Fasttranslator Inc. or Schnellübersetzer GmbH. Invoices not matching the requirements as specified in this policy will be rejected.
2. How to address the invoice
If you do not know whom to select, then visit this Invoice Address Lookup website. Entering any order number will display immediately the correct invoice address.
Without exceptions, an invoice must be addressed as follows to one of the following accounting units:
If you select Snelvertaler BV, mention:
Snelvertaler BV
Randstad 22-15
1316 BN Almere
The Netherlands
(VAT number NL814152016B01)
or
If you select Schnelluebersetzer GmbH, mention:
Übersetzungsbüro Schnellübersetzer GmbH
Eupener Straße 150
D-50933 Cologne
Germany
(VAT number DE262306885)
or
If you select Fasttranslator, Inc., mention:
Fasttranslator, Inc.
30700 Russell Ranch Road
Suite 250
Westlake Village, CA 91362
United States
Each invoice should contain orders from a single accounting unit only. We encourage you to save up as many orders as possible per invoice, with a maximum of 30 orders per invoice.
3. How to submit the invoice
We only accept invoices submitted in the formats PDF (preferable), Word or Excel. The invoice upload form on this webpage submits your invoice directly to our Finance Department. The upload process may take a little while. If you see the confirmation page after the upload, be assured that the upload was successful.
We only accept invoices through this website. Please refrain from sending any invoice directly to any project manager and do not email invoices to our Finance Department either. Uploading your invoice is a strict requirement. Please avoid uploading the same invoice repeatedly and upload only 1 invoice at the time: your file may not contain multiple invoices in itself.
4. Invoice requirements
Your invoice must contain at least the following general information:
- Your company name, if applicable.
- Your own name.
- Your full address details.
- The total amount including one currency per invoice.
- All orders on the invoice, and the total amount, must be in the same single currency, and must have been agreed upon in that currency. Orders agreed upon in different currencies, cannot be invoiced together. Example: if you agreed on EUR for an order and you invoice that same order in SEK, the invoice will be rejected.
- Our six digit order number(s), with or without the respective project manager's initials or full name, for example #575112 or #575112JoDo or #575112Jonathan.
- For each single order, you must specify either
- One fixed price, or
- A unit count (word count) including the unit price including a specification whether the charge is based on either source or target count.
- The appropriate tax percentage and tax amount. (VAT, also known as IVA, TVA, MwSt, btw, GST, MOMS or UST. According to EU legislation VAT Reverse Charge may be applicable depending on the country you are based in and the accounting unit you submit your invoice to.
- Your VAT number, only if you are a registered business within the European Union.
- Your own unique never-used-before Translator Invoice Payment Reference. We aim to use this as a payment reference, unless we accumulate multiple invoice amounts into a single payment. Due to technical restrictions, the reference length itself is limited to 18 characters in total. In addition, certain characters such as % and # are not allowed. When entering the reference, the website will instantly show if your reference is acceptable or not, allowing you to change it before uploading the invoice.
5. Payment detail requirements
Your invoice must contain at least the following payment information:
- IBAN, if applicable
(International Bank Account Number) - BBAN, if no IBAN is available
(Basic Bank Account Number) - Full name and address of the account holder
- Full name and address of the bank institution
- BIC (Bank Identifier Code)
- SWIFT, if applicable
- Specific information, in example ABA or Routing Number, if applicable
- As alternative for a bank transfer, your PayPal account
Important: If your bank account is able to process only a certain currency, you must mention this explicitly. We will assume the company name is the account holder, unless clearly specified otherwise. Payment charges as a result of insufficient or incorrect payment information will be passed on to you.
6. What to do if my payment details change
Your payment details are stored in our software and may be used for future payments as well. It is your responsibility to provide us by email with changes to bank details or addresses for payment no less than 4 weeks before they take effect. If you only mention new banking details on the invoice itself, your account may be updated too late or not at all in our software. Any charges due to (late) provision of wrong banking details may be deducted from your total invoice amount. Invoices that were uploaded to us before we received an account change, may or may not be paid using the 'old' details as mentioned on that specific invoice.
7. Procedure after uploading your invoice
After the invoice upload, we will import it in our systems and process it within 10 days. There are 3 possible outcomes:
- The invoice is automatically approved immediately.
You will receive an approval notification email including an estimated payment date. - The invoice is automatically rejected immediately.
You will receive a rejection notification email including the rejection reason details. - The invoice could not be validated (yet!) for any reason.
The invoice will be processed manually, which can take up to 6 weeks depending on the complexity and the number of orders and project managers involved. Once processed, you will receive either an approval or a rejection email.
If the invoice is rejected, you must always resubmit an (adjusted) invoice using the invoice upload form on this website, since rejected invoices cannot be processed twice. Once the actual payment is scheduled towards our financial institution, you will receive a remittance advice by email including the payment reference.
8. Payment terms and due date
Invoices are normally paid seven weeks after we receive the invoice via the upload form, rounded to the Wednesday following. This means a minimum of 49 days and a maximum of 55 days, depending on which day you upload your invoice. Approved invoices that were submitted separately but within the same week, are likely to be bundled for payment if the accounting unit matches. The due date is calculated by applying agreed terms to the latter of invoice date or invoice upload date. All invoices are paid on our calculated due date. When uploading your invoice, you may choose for expedited payment, which means receiving full payment within 8 working days after the initial upload against an early payment discount on your total invoice amount. For each invoice, the fee is 4% (3.5% until 30-06-2023). The exchange rates are calculated by us, depending on invoice date or upload date. The expedited payment charges should explicitly not be specified or calculated on the invoice itself, since our system automatically calculates the deduction based on the total invoice amount, meaning it would then be charged twice: by you and by us. Please note that with expedited invoices we do not guarantee payment in 8 days: depending on the approval status of the orders itself. If payment cannot be made timely as a result of such circumstances, we will mostly waive the discount out of courtesy and pay as soon as possible nonetheless.
9. Payment methods and currencies
Payments will be remitted through one of our various bank accounts, which are held in different countries and different currencies. We aim to pay invoices in the same currency as the invoiced currency, however, we do not guarantee this. Fasttranslator USA is able to submit wire transfers in EUR or USD. Schnelluebersetzer GmbH is able to submit wire transfers in EUR and CHF. Snelvertaler BV is able to submit wire transfers in EUR and SEK. For Snelvertaler BV, other currencies may be allowed, however only upon approval from our Finance department prior to the purchase itself. In addition, depending on the selected branch office and payment method, as well as for internal reasons, we reserve the right to decide anytime to pay in an alternative currency. As an alternative for a wire transfer, we can submit payment through PayPal, in which case payments are in principle remitted in EUR for the BV, in EUR for the GmbH and in USD for the American Inc.
We do not generally accept other methods of payment, including Skrill and Western Union (no exceptions), cheque payments (except for invoices submitted to the Fasttranslator Inc branche office) or cash payments (no exceptions).
By default, we use the shared costs option and we never add any extra amount to cover for bank or similar charges. Please be aware that sending separate invoices for small amounts may result in high bank charges on both sides. To avoid this, try to accumulate smaller amounts on one invoice as much as possible before uploading them. We are not able to accumulate invoices or payments, or to delay/expedite a payment date upon request.
10. Questions?
If you have any questions regarding an invoice, you can send an email to finance@fasttranslator.com. Please ensure you enclose a copy invoice or mention the Fasttranslator Tracking ID in case you have one. As an alternative, upload a reminder invoice and select Reminder, but only if the originally selected payment term expired, which is either 8 working days or 55 regular days. Reminders for which the originally selected payment term did not yet expire, will simply be ignored. Valid reminders will be processed carefully with a certain urgency. Do not send or ask any invoice related questions or invoice reminders to our project managers, as they won't be able to answer them, only causing delay in processing. Exception to this rule is when an invoice is rejected by a project manager and you do not understand the reason.