Overview
The billable party, why the country and VAT ID on it are tax inputs, and how it relates to contacts and projects.
An organization is a company. It is the party you bill, and almost always the reason a project exists.
Why this record matters more than it looks
Two fields on an organization are not descriptive, they are tax inputs:
- Country
- VAT ID
Together with your own invoicing profile they decide the tax treatment of every invoice you send that organization: domestic VAT, reverse charge, third country. Getting them wrong is not a cosmetic error, it is an invoice with the wrong VAT on it.
See How VAT is decided.
How it connects to everything else
- Contacts belong to an organization, in a role.
- Projects point at one or more organizations, each in a role.
- Invoices are addressed to an organization, and snapshot its details at the moment you issue.
That last one is worth knowing: renaming an organization does not rewrite invoices you already issued. They keep the name and address they carried when they were issued, which is what they should do.
Private individuals
If you invoice a person rather than a company, you still create an organization for them. It is the billable party, whatever it is called.
Whether a client is a business or a private individual is recorded, and it matters: e-invoicing covers business customers, so the distinction changes what the mandate asks of you.