Policymakers and lobbyists propagate e-invoicing as the promised land, bringing much needed relief in times of financial turmoil. That’s good, isn’t it?
But why is the uptake of e-invoicing so much lower than expected and hoped for? Let’s find out, using a tiny litte poll.
Check it and fill it out below. In our next newsletter we’ll display the results:
[polldaddy poll=2083687]
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e-invoicing is over-administrated (heavy legal requirements/conditions, cumbersome audit trail) compared with the paper invoice. Also, complying with these constraints will result in complicated (operational) processes and tricky IT-systems.
All these need to be implemented in parallel to the persisting paper-invoice, as long as e-invoice hasn’t become ubiquitious.
@Schweingruber Thomas,
Thanks for your feedback! I think your opionion is food for thought or at least discussion.
Suppose you were the entire EU Expertgroup, what would you recommend? Implementing in parallel to the persisting paper-invoice, as long as e-invoice hasn’t become ubiquitious?
Friso
EEI Platform
In order to make e-invoicse more attractive, I can make out two fields of activity:
1) Loosening of the requirements for “proof of authenticity” (digital signature) would be a good starting point. What’s so much less secure about an e-Invoice in comparison to a paper invoice? Or are there some activities ongoing in that area allready?
2) Coexistence of the paper- and e-Invoice will remain a fact for years to come. That again implies, that each player will need to maintain processes for both the paper and the electronic world. That, seen as an isolated fact, is not very attractive! So each player (the invoicing party, the receiving party) should get some more informations/arguments regarding the possible savings:
- Less time lost opening envelopes
- Less time spent making photocopies of paper-invoices (what’s the average number of copies made per invoice?)
- Less paper wasted (here again come those copies)
- Less binders needed
- Less time wasted looking for invoices (or copies of invoices) that were lost… or stuck in the wrong binder
- What else?
Of course there’s a downside on the e-invoice as well:
- Higher dependency on IT
- More IT-storage required
- Higher quality of IT-storage required
- Is special access control required for the e-invoices? I don’t know.
- others…
PS: I haven’t gotten around to reading all the documents of the EU expert group yet, so I may be repeating some of the informations therein.
@Schweingruber Thomas
1) Loosening of the requirements for “proof of authenticity” Or are there some activities ongoing in that area already?
Yes and no. There was a concept VAT directive which intended to loosen things up. But then a new compromise from the EU Precidency showed that there may still be stricter rules. In the Netherlands the e-invoicing rules have been loosened up completely: with big results! So, it just a matter of getting used to and of course current commercial interests
2) Coexistence of the paper- and e-Invoice:
Yip. But how does this help adoption?
PS EU Expertgroep:
Don’t bother reading the final report (sorry for that guys!) it has to many pages eg is not concise enough.
Cheers.