POSTNATAL-LIFECYCLE

Postnatal lifecycle. The lifecycle of an EDI message after acceptance by the receiver — accounting, fiscal and operational.

Definition

The postnatal lifecycle designates the sequence of states an EDI business message goes through after its initial acceptance by the receiver: posting to accounts, payment, reconciliation, legal archiving, purge. Each state typically generates an additional event beyond the initial EDI document: payment acknowledgement, dunning letter, dispute notice, certified-archive attestation.

Origin

The term "postnatal lifecycle" is borrowed from e-invoicing vocabulary and popularised by OpenPEPPOL in its BIS Billing documents. It reflects the fact that the initial acceptance of an invoice (PEPPOL Invoice Response, code AB) is only one step among many — the invoice continues to live in the receiver's accounting system for 10 years (legal archiving period in France and Germany).

Example in context

For a French B2G invoice sent through Chorus Pro, the typical postnatal lifecycle chains: filed (PDA), admissible (Chorus Pro validation), taken over (entered with the authorising officer), service done (service validation), set for payment (payment instruction), paid (DGFiP acquittal), archived (locked in evidence-grade ESF). The system must be able to certify each of these states for 10 years in case of tax audit.

Related terms

• Audit trail — journal that materialises the postnatal lifecycle.
• Echo back — mechanism that anchors the lifecycle by references.
• PEPPOL — network that formalises the lifecycle in its BIS profiles.