Finance Where I'm From: Split Payments and Electronic Everything in Peru with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

Every country in Latin America seems to have a fiscal rule that makes newcomers stop and say “wait, really?” In Peru, that rule is the detraction system. Imagine telling your accounts payable team that for many of the services they buy, they are not allowed to pay the supplier the full amount of the invoice. A fixed percentage of it must be deposited instead into a special account the supplier holds at the state bank, and the supplier can only use that money to pay taxes.

I want to use this article to walk through two things that define finance work in Peru for anyone running Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central: the detraction system, and the sheer completeness of SUNAT's electronic ecosystem, where not just invoices but the accounting books themselves are filed electronically. Beyond Peru, though, I think this exploration is instructive for any Business Central customer thinking about what compliance-driven automation can do. What looks at first like extra burden on the AP team ends up unifying financial management in ways that teams everywhere try to achieve but rarely do voluntarily.

Detractions: The payment your supplier never fully receives

The detraction system — formally the SPOT, though everyone just says detracciones — exists because SUNAT, the Peruvian tax authority, wanted to secure tax collection in sectors where evasion was historically high. The mechanics seem simple, but the approach demands that businesses accept several key conditions.

When a company buys certain goods or services, it must split the payment: a percentage of the invoice total, which varies by the type of good or service, is deposited into the supplier's detraction account at Banco de la Nación. The supplier receives the rest. And the responsibility for that split sits with the buyer, not the supplier. The law defines which goods and services are subject and at what rates; the paying company has to recognize them, calculate the split, and make the deposit itself. The funds in that account still belong to the supplier but they can essentially only be used to pay taxes.