Maybe Tim is contemplating that future UN XML will be a sort
of UBL 3.0? I think something could be done if UBL will be based on the UN CCL (Common Components Libary). Then, what Mikkel was saying back in 2011 could be possible, a common data model with common data elements library.

Olav Astad Kristiansen
Difi

UN/CEFACT and OASIS UBL have signed a couple of years ago a MoU building the basis of convergence of the two syntaxes.

It’s interesting to read that Tim only speaks about UBL as the single syntax to use and leaves UN XML aside despite his engagement there.

Don’t forget Accounts Payable News. We have all the usual suspects – white papers, research, latest news, events, monthly newsletters, surveys, webinars – and new for 2012 – the APN Accounts Payable Awards. All approached with a fresh and passionate angle, mostly with a UK focus, but obviously relevant elsewhere too.

Take care,

Ellen

No question this is the way most consumer products will be heading in a long run.

Personally I do not need my invoices in any other situation than when I choose to interact with them (i.e. pay them). In iTunes this part was eliminated – you are charged by default.

In other processes (let’s say SME sector), ability to receive your invoices/bills actually may hinder the process because if you receive your invoice on the run, how’d you make sure that you come around to actually pay them?

I totally agree with the previous commentator about the fact that the recipient should be able to choose – for sure some prefer it on the mobile. To provide this ability there should be a “billing preference” available with some of your public profile – be it Facebook, LinkedIn, your local bank or whatever – where the invoice issuer could check how you’d like to be charged (via bill, credit card, COD, etc.)

Hopefully such services will emerge in the abundance so receivers can also choose the profile they’ll be linked to the invoice issuers system, not forcing everybody to use e.g. facebook ;)

” Just like in any other country, compliance with these rules proved to be expensive and, in practice, a restricting in the use of e-invoices.”

Disappointing that a major like KPMG resorts to such simplistic statements as to a presumed universal truth in relation to the cost or added value of specific compliance methods.

The 2001 Directive was restrictive in that it allowed Member States to limit implementation options. For other reasons it led to fragmented Member State transpositions. The option to restrict was lifted in 2010 so that from 2013 the market can choose which functionally equivalent paths to compliance are the most cost-effective in which circumstances. The two technology-based compliance options laid out in the 2001 Directive are sometimes extremely cost-effective and sometimes they are not – and this can surely be said about any other way to meet the legal objectives of demonstrating long-term integrity and auditability.

We see some players trying to mystify the 2010 Directive ameliorations by creating an “old” vs “new” dichotomy, obviously in order to discredit technology-based options and push people to process-based compliance. It would be going too far to speculate about underlying commercial motives — this reaction is just to encourage everyone to finally focus on the WHAT (the bar hasn’t been lowered: you MUST be able to demonstrate long-term integrity and authenticity, in all cases and always) so that businesses can evaluate the costs and benefits of the HOW on the basis of competitive market offerings. If we don’t get the discipline to this in the expert community we end up with more endless and pointless discussions about the absolute good or bad of various methods.

Readers may review CaseFox.com. CaseFox is a Web-based Time and Invoicing Software for tracking of your billable/non-billable hours and expenses, Trust Accountinbg, create client invoices, record payments, tracking case notes, managing case documents, monitoring unbilled hours, unbilled invoices and many other tasks. Multi-user role based access to cases. Special contract attorney access to your account.

Chosing a full paperless treatment means:
* Scan all paper invoices into a digital image.
* Use a OCR-technology for interpretation of the images (ex Readsoft).
* Integrate the PDF-invoicing on the level of the OCR-system so there’s no difference anymore between a scanned invoice and a PDF-invoice
* Store all (scanned/PDF)images in a digital archiving system that is linked with your ERP-system.
* Integrate all EDI-invoices in your ERP-system. Make sure that you provide an image based on your EDI-data.
* Approve all this invoices based on a matching with your order (2-way or 3-way) or by your internal customer by electronic signature.

When you’re organised like this, benefits of e-invoicing are very high.

At the risk of sounding like a commercial, I submit that our company is trying to help humans make that transition!

Qoppa Software’s desktop tools (PDF Studio 7 on Mac, Windows, Linux or qPDF Notes on Android) make it easier for humans to actually manage the PDFs they collect. PDF invoices can be collected into separate files, bookmarked by date or whatever method the user wants, marked with whatever notes are relevant, and even emailed to someone else without leaving the tool.

Monthly fee is incorrect. Can you please change monthly fee to 100 euros. Thanks!

Sami Nikula
Product Marketing Manager
Basware

Thank you for your comment. We believed the report is free, but registering for AIMM isn’t.

Perhaps you could provide us a link to your page from where visitors can download the report?

Admin

Our award winning e-Invoicing solution enables you to send e-Invoices directly from your ERP, whilst giving Credit Control full visibility of customer invoice status. This ultimately leads to collection SEPA Direct Debit also available from Bottomline. On the buyer side our AP automation suite will enable you to process and approval invoices prior to upload into your ERP or Finance Application.

As a European provider of invoicing solutions for over 20 years, Bottomline solutions support traditional invoicing such as Paper or Signed PDF but also data driven models via SWIFT into online Banking platforms or other service providers. This includes FREE supplier or buyer on-boarding onto SWIFT to ensure you have 100% invoice integrity and non-repudiation of transactions. Using SWIFT e-Invoicing enables you to adopt ISO20022 not just for Invoices but for SEPA Direct Debit or Payment as well.

Past post include: AP Automation in 2012, Electronic Invoicing Options for Accounts Payable and 2011–An Electronic Invoice Review.

Regards
James R. Clawson

Online publisher of Instruction, Benchmarks, News, Forms, Checklists, Templates, Calculators, Reference Tables, online video and in-person Training, Online Staff Training; we produce webinars, e-newsletters, online summits and the live Accounts Payable Leadership Conference.

We are the co-developer/provider of The Accounts Payable Certification Programs, with IOMA (now IOFM), the largest, most recognized Accounts Payable certification in the world.

Cheers,
Rob

How about including Ardent Partners here :)?

I believe, espcially in Africa, that a combined approach is mandated by the capabilities of the recipient company/person. i.e. Paper and Electronic may need to be used and may be the best approach. That said, even if you use some paper, you can still manage the process, if approached properly, using a single platform. In other words a single extract, generation and archive process but just change the send channel – paper or electronic. eBilling service suppliers should offer a full outsource service that includes all channels including print and post.

This solution addresses cross border invoicing and is true 4-corner e-Invoicing. For more information about how other providers or corporate can start using SWIFT for secure and global e-Invoicing visit the http://www.bottomline.co.uk or Tieto websites.

Next step is fully digital catalogues and order to invoice with automatch.

So, 19.6 percent is “the most popular”. Gee, what does PreyPal call the other 80.4 percent? “The most UNpopular?” Does anyone actually read this PR nonsense before they send it out?

eBay / PayPal / Donahoe: Dead Men Walking.

Thank you for your comment. We changed the phrase “e-invoices’ into “e-bills”.

When it comes to the definition of “e-invoicing”, well that seems to be different between geographical regions, between key actors and even within key actors.

With regard to the latter. In the comments you’ll find several comments from BSP’s with different explanations of with they believe e-invoicing is.

Bruno makes a valid point here, pointing out the difference of process in Taiwan compared to European e-invoicing landscape. Editor’s argument seems to be that if something transits from paper to bits and bytes, that’s e-invoicing / e-billing. My question: which of the two is it and do we all even understand these terms alike?

To me, e-invoicing is something that is machine readable, process indipendent, cross-platform and cross-industry.

If Taiwan is implementing a process where all sales receipts are obtainable in an electronic form to a governmental process (as Bruno explained, I don’t know about this) it is certainly an “e”-process, but not necessarily an “invoice”-process. The distinction seems quite clear: these messages can only be processed by the Taiwanese government for taxation purposes. This message can not be sent to me (to another country) nor can I send one abroad.

I’m more than happy to discuss about the possibilities of application integration and open interfaces on governmental processes. I even have some great examples. But to call that e-invoicing seems a bit misleading.

Thank you for your comment.

We like to make a distinction between on the one hand the backgrounds behind the move and on the other hand the effects of the move.

Regardless of its possible background (reducing paper, fiscal compliance, preventing tax evasion), the actual effects of the move are that the paper bills are replaced with e-bills. So, going from paper fibres to bits and bytes is e-invoicing/e-billing. Right?

From a cultural and historical perspective Taiwan is very capable in realising such major transitions. But not only Taiwan, but also several other Asian countries. In fact the Latin American countries also showed how fast things can go.

Remarkably, the European transpose their perception e-invoicing/e-billing/ap automation on other continents. While these continents show far greater progress than Europe does, when they put their minds to it.

Perhaps it would be good to change the ‘teacher’ and ‘student’ roles sometimes?

Vesa Kotilainen – you can certainly “fetch” bills online or just use other push based channels such as email and RSS for delivery. That way not bothering with visiting multiple sites.

Good one. I believe you have a real business case there if you build something. Both for B2C/G2C (e-billing) and B2B/B2G (e-invoicing).

We use Lastpass in combination with Symbaloo to make things easier for us.

The E-invoicing Platform.

Let’s say I get approx. 7 bills per month. One cannot expect me to log into 7 different sites with 7 different credetials and open 7 different invoices in order to just pay my dues.

I thought that the liberalization would be in effect as from January 1st 2013 ?

Thanks again. Best regards. Daniel

Thank you for your feedback and additional information

The E-invoicing Platform

Thank you for your elaborate comment.

The E-invoicing Team

Thank you for expressing you opinion.

Only 15 or so of the national fora are in place. Some of these national fora have an even worse set of objectives and an even worse representation then the EU Forum.

We’ll just have to wait and see. But it’s not looking good.

E-invoicing Platform team

Take the TAXUD statement that (if you pardon my paraphrasing)the form of an invoice is legally unrelated to a company’s ability to prove invoice integrity and authenticity. This seems to upset some people while others present it like a revolution.

The phrase “substance over form” has been used to summarize the changes introduced with Directive 2010/45. It is a great injustice to penalize a company which has perfect evidence of its invoices merely because this evidence is not in a predefined imposed form. This injustice was legally possible under the previous VAT Directive rules, and the market should applaud its removal.

This positive change however has nothing to do with the form in which invoices are received or archived. The form of an invoice and the form of evidence of integrity and authenticity of an invoice are two entirely unrelated issues – that, in my reading at least, is one of the key reasons for the TAXUD clarification.

The pre-2010/45 situation was never characterized in any significant way by Member States’ insistence on symmetry of form for invoices stored by trading partners. There are some countries were form symmetry has been or continues to be a written rule (in France, for example, the tax administration’s guidance notes on the 2001 Directive transposition required form symmetry for e-invoices under the EDI option) – but thios has not been an overwhelming majority. So why this cheering or depression over a minor and really quite logical explanation from TAXUD?

To be VAT compliant, each trading partner must store:
(1) an invoice –and there can only be one invoice, which is why the market has often used the term “original” invoice to distinguish it from other invoice-like data that parties may exchange or process; however this term has fallen into disrepute because it has become frequently misused to imply symmetry of form– that is or can be made legible and
(2) evidence of its integrity and authenticity.

Under the 2001 rules, the form of (2) could be restriced by Member States. (1) has always been defined by its content. Under the 2010 rules, now also (2) can take any form. (2) is determined by its adequacy –read: is it sufficient to convince a tax auditor?– and in some cases (Art 233.2) by law.

(1) and (2) are legally completely separate notions, however the form of (1) may be affected by or play a role in the strength of (2) — it should not come as a surprise that if a taxable person can prove that the form of an invoice is identical to the form in which it was issued, this can contribute to evidence that also the semantic content has not changed. Conversely, if you store e.g. an EDI message that has been converted seven times before you formally received it from your supplier, this means (at least under the EDI compliance option) that you must maintain evidence of these conversions all being sufficiently controlled in order to convince a tax auditor that the content of the invoice has not changed. If you have and maintain this evidence there should be absolutely no problem – but naturally, maintaining audit trails of seven historical conversions requires quite a bit more control and thus introduces risk compared to maintaining no such audit trails at all.

The key point here is, however, that legally under the new Directive you’re free to make your own choices as long as you have (1) and (2).

This is not the place to go into the differences as regards the role of form in the different compliance approaches, however hopefully the above shows why I believe the noise about freedom of invoice form to be unjustified.

Couple of current players in the market are trying to write their own rules, but still hope there is opportunity for a successfull interoperability in the market.

Totally agree that current business models cannot be based only on transactional revenue and there should more value added services in the market. The fact is, there are only limited amount of invoices, and after tough competition average transaction price is even below 0,05 €, there is no business case to have so many players in the market. We can allready see same phenomenon as in the transactional printing market for 10-15 years ago. Prices are declining even the e-penetration is still very low.

But, let’s try to concentrate on open ideas ( networks, address services :-)) and make positive business case for the customers and service providers at least in European market!

Frank Lodewijks

Our core Cloud Invoice service operates at the data level within the PDF – reading the data as the original billing system intended. We also have Cloud Invoice:OCR which converts scanned paper invoices. All our solutions are delivered as a services in the cloud, with zero software footprint.

Feel free to contact me through the enquiry page on our site if you need more information. Regards, Richard