If you are scaling a dropshipping operation, month-end can feel like a wall of receipts, screenshots, and spreadsheet patches. One small change made the wall disappear for a fast-growing store: standardized, one-click AliExpress invoices. Here is how a Shopify brand stepped up from 50 to 5,000 orders a month and cut its month-end close time by half by getting serious about documentation.
Why invoices make or break the close
Closing the books is easier when the source documents are accurate, standardized, and ready on demand. Month-end performance benchmarks back this up. In its long-running Office of Finance research, Ventana Research reports that 61 percent of companies finish the monthly close within six business days, and that higher degrees of automation strongly correlate with faster closes. In a separate overview, FloQast’s analysis points to APQC data placing the median monthly close at 6.4 days across 2,300 organizations, with top quartile performers closing in 4.8 days or less. Fewer days closing means more days analyzing and planning.
For AliExpress-first sellers, the challenge is that marketplace documentation often does not arrive in a consistent, bookkeeping-ready format. EU sellers face a special twist. Under the 2021 e-commerce package, the European Commission explains that marketplaces facilitating certain sales are deemed suppliers for VAT purposes and collect VAT at checkout in many low-value import scenarios. While that is convenient for tax at point of sale, your finance team still needs a compliant, detailed invoice file for each order that captures supplier details, tax identifiers, and line items in a consistent layout for accounting and audit readiness.
What belongs on a VAT invoice is not a mystery. As a useful summary, Avalara’s EU VAT guide lists the common fields tax authorities expect, including a sequential invoice number, invoice and supply dates, supplier and customer names and addresses, supplier VAT ID, description and quantities, and VAT rate and amount. When these details are scattered across emails or buried in marketplace pages, accuracy and speed suffer.
The baseline: a store stuck at nine-day closes
In Q1, a small EU-based brand running on Shopify hit 50 orders a month and took nine business days to close. By Q4, marketing worked, volume spiked past 5,000 orders monthly, and the spreadsheet approach was melting.
The symptoms will sound familiar to many owner-operators and outsourced bookkeepers:
- The team screenshotted AliExpress order details and pasted them into PDFs because the default order screens were not consistent enough for their accountant.
- Purchase evidence and supplier information lived in different files with different naming patterns. Matching them to Shopify orders took hours.
- Refunds and partial shipments created gaps that required manual detective work late in the close.
- The accountant could not batch-reconcile cost of goods sold because the invoice files did not have uniform dates or supplier fields.
The finance lead put it plainly: the company had a documentation problem, not an accounting problem. They needed a way to capture every AliExpress purchase as a proper, printer-friendly PDF with consistent fields, sequential numbering, and date formats their accounting system and auditor would accept.
The pivot: one-click AliExpress invoices, standardized
The team implemented AliBilling, a niche tool that places a download button right next to each order inside AliExpress My Orders and produces printer-friendly, customizable PDF invoices. From there, they built a simple playbook to standardize every invoice that flowed through the business.
What made the difference was not just faster downloads, but standardization:
- Consistent fields. They used the template editor to add company name, address, and tax IDs, plus supplier details and notes needed for customs support. The EU VAT invoice elements summarized by Avalara became their checklist.
- Consistent dates. The team normalized invoice and supply dates into a single format. One recon rule replaced dozens of exceptions.
- Consistent numbering. They adopted a sequential invoice ID convention. Matching files to orders went from slow to instant.
- Consistent output. Every invoice rendered cleanly as a compact PDF ready for auditors and accountants, no screenshots required.
The process took minutes to deploy. A staffer followed this quick guide, which mirrors the setup shown in AliBilling’s tutorial on how to download an AliExpress invoice: install the Chrome extension, open AliExpress My Orders, click the invoice button next to any order, and customize the fields and date formats once. The next click produced a ready-to-file PDF.
For team members and VAs, the company published a two-page SOP with screenshots, naming conventions, and a link to AliBilling’s step-by-step blog on how to download an invoice from AliExpress. Everyone followed the same three moves: open order, click invoice, save using the prescribed filename.
What about VAT invoices from AliExpress directly?
Marketplace documentation varies by region and transaction type. AliExpress collects VAT at checkout in many EU scenarios under IOSS, and the Commission clarifies that platforms can be deemed suppliers in such cases, which shifts VAT collection to the platform in specific circumstances, as outlined on the EU’s IOSS page. Sellers still need a complete, standardized invoice record for their books. In practice, accountants often request a consistent invoice layout that includes your legal entity and VAT details alongside supplier information. Using a generator that pulls order data into a customizable PDF gives you control over the fields, formatting, and numbering that your ledger rules and auditor expect.
Results: 50 percent faster close, cleaner reconciliations
In the first month of using standardized one-click invoices, the team cut their close from eight to four business days. The improvement stood up as volumes grew, which is consistent with the automation effect highlighted by Ventana Research: organizations applying substantial automation are far more likely to complete the monthly close within six business days. With invoices standardized, reconciliations and accruals turned into repeatable steps.
The finance lead shared three practical impacts:
- Batch reconciliation replaced one-off checks. Because every purchase invoice shared the same structure, their accountant filtered and matched cost of goods sold by supplier and date in minutes.
- Exceptions were obvious. Refunds and partial shipments stood out immediately in the folder structure and naming scheme, so the team created a separate “exceptions to accrue” queue instead of muddying the main ledger.
- Audit comfort increased. Having clean, printer-friendly PDFs with proper fields made the year-end review smoother. As FloQast’s overview notes, faster closes need to remain clean. Standardized invoice files help maintain accuracy without sacrificing speed.
The operating playbook you can copy
You do not need a finance transformation program to get these gains. This entire playbook runs on simple tools and habits:
- Install the AliBilling Chrome extension and configure invoice fields one time. AliBilling’s FAQs cover common setup questions, and the company’s 24/7 support can help if something looks off.
- Decide date and numbering conventions. Agree on invoice date format and a sequential pattern, then document it. Your accountant will love you.
- Save files in a folder structure your ledger rules can digest. For example: year/month/supplier, with filenames that begin with the invoice number and order ID.
- Batch-download and review at a daily cutoff, not just at month-end. You will reduce the end-of-month spike and catch exceptions earlier.
- Share a one-page SOP with screenshots so any VA or junior can run the flow. Link to AliBilling’s official how-to guide so training sticks.
If you sell on Shopify, it is worth pairing this with a clean order export and naming convention on the storefront side. You can launch or migrate quickly using Shopify, then align your Shopify order IDs with your AliExpress invoice filenames so matching is instant.
Cost and ROI
AliBilling markets unlimited invoice downloads and live support at a low price point. The site lists an annual plan at 29 dollars per user per year, and the Chrome Web Store shows alternative options such as 20 dollars for three months, 35 dollars for six months, and 60 dollars lifetime, which signals flexible, low-cost plans. Check the latest options on the pricing page.
In the case above, two staff members spent roughly 18 combined hours per month on manual invoice capture and formatting before standardization. After standardization, those tasks took under 4 hours. At a blended 25 dollars per hour, the monthly time savings of about 350 dollars paid for a year of AliBilling in under one week. The bigger win was the four days reclaimed at month-end for analysis and planning.
Compliance and documentation tips for EU and beyond
While AliBilling provides the mechanics of generating and organizing invoices, you should set the content to reflect your jurisdiction’s requirements and your accountant’s preferences. As a reference, Avalara’s overview of EU VAT invoice requirements is a practical checklist for fields to include. This is especially relevant if you need to reclaim VAT or support cross-border filings.
Since 2021, the EU’s e-commerce reforms place more responsibility on digital platforms. The European Commission notes that online marketplaces facilitating certain sales are deemed for VAT purposes to have received and supplied goods, which is why VAT can be collected at checkout under IOSS in many low-value import scenarios, as explained on the EU’s One Stop Shop site. Your invoice archive still needs to reflect every purchase in a complete and consistent format for bookkeeping, tax preparation, and possible customs questions.
If you are newer to obligations, AliBilling’s blog posts on tax obligations 101 for dropshippers and dropshipping the legal way are helpful primers. When in doubt, confirm with your accountant. You can also review AliBilling’s terms of service and privacy policy as part of your vendor due diligence.
Implementation checklist to hit the ground running
- Configure invoice fields to include legal entity name, address, VAT or tax IDs, and supplier details, mirroring your jurisdiction’s expectations.
- Choose a single date format that matches your accounting system and apply it across the board.
- Adopt a sequential invoice numbering scheme, and make it part of your filename.
- Save PDFs in a consistent folder structure, with subfolders by month and supplier.
- Schedule a daily invoice run and a weekly exception review to prevent month-end crunch.
- Train VAs with a 10-minute walk-through and your written SOP. Link them to AliBilling’s how-to article and blog tutorial.
What this unlocks as you scale
The most overlooked benefit of a faster close is everything you can start doing with the time you get back. In Ventana’s analysis of close performance, the teams that automate and close faster are better positioned to deliver timely insights and respond with agility. When your AliExpress invoices no longer clog the pipes, you can tighten your purchasing cadence, improve supplier negotiations with clean spend data, and produce reliable contribution margin reports for every product and channel.
More importantly, your accountant becomes a strategic partner instead of a firefighter. When invoice files are uniform, your bookkeeper can batch-reconcile, accrue exceptions cleanly, and flag issues early. As FloQast’s discussion of close best practices reminds us, closing quickly should never mean closing sloppily. Standardization keeps the close both fast and clean.
If you are staring down another end-of-month scramble, start small. Install the extension, configure the fields once, and standardize your naming. Ask your accountant what would make their job easier and bake that into your template. You can handle unlimited invoice downloads on all your AliExpress orders, and if you need help, AliBilling’s support team is available. A four-day close feels great the first time. It feels even better when it becomes your new normal. 🚀
