They wrote to the EU Expert Group shortly before its closure. Their comments and suggestions were not taken on board. Still, they find their positions reflected in many of the comments submitted to the Final Report of the Expert Group.

As outlined in the Open Letter underneath, they believe that a number of the base assumptions behind recent policy initiatives and in particular the Commission’s proposal for modifying the VAT Directive’s rules on e-invoicing are incorrect. As a consequence, some of the policy directions currently being explored in the negotiations on this topic among Member States are allegedly harmful for jobs and growth in Europe.

Read about the proposed compromise in their Open Letter:
http://www.epractitionersvoice.eu/assets/Position_Practitioners_FINAL.pdf

Anyone wishing to join the list of supporters can send a mail to einvoicing.practitioners@gmail.com

ISIS Papyrus has expressed their vision and activities in her new publication: “ISIS Papyrus Focus Report” which shows and elaborately explains her billing solutions across industries and platforms.

ISIS Papyrus develops and delivers consolidated customer communication and process optimization solutions for enterprise organizations in the financial, utility, telecommunications, healthcare, insurance and public sectors.

In 2008 ISIS Papyrus celebrates 20 years of excellence and customer-focused innovation, with 16 worldwide offices, 14 subsidiaries and three development centers supporting more than 2, 000 enterprise and government customers worldwide who are using ISIS Papyrus solutions for process improvement, business correspondence, multi-channel output, e-mail, document capture and archiving.

Today more than 2000 customers have chosen ISIS Papyrus as a proven and fully integrated customer communications platform for end-to-end flexibility, efficiency, collaboration, quality and continuous improvement of customer data, content and processes.

Read the publication below:

Basware, the global leader in purchase-to-pay solutions, today announced the addition of e-procurement functionality to Basware Connectivity services.

Basware Connectivity covers the entire purchase-to-pay process from cataloguing and procurement to e-invoicing, providing crucial integration with an organisation’s existing stock and resource management systems.

Basware Connectivity benefits both supplier and buyer, reducing cost per transaction, mitigating error, eliminating paper-based processes and speeding up payment.

Basware Connectivity for Procurement enhances the buyer-supplier collaboration capability of Basware Connectivity, adding:

    - Purchase Message Exchange:
    - Integrating electronic order negotiations within one buyer-supplier
      ecosystem
    - Eliminating the errors inherent in manual order management and creating
      a fully auditable trail
    - Catalogue Exchange:
    - Facilitating the electronic delivery of supplier catalogues to the
      buyer's procurement environment, boosting the quantity of catalogue
      items
    - Supplier self service enables 24-hour updating of content
    - Enforces negotiated contract conditions and pricing

Electronic invoice and procurement message exchange significantly increases data accuracy by replacing error-prone manual processes with automation. Through Basware Connectivity, electronic documents are created in procurement systems and fed directly to invoice processing solutions, enabling better visibility and a full audit trail. Electronic transactions enable automated order management as well as automated invoice processing and payment which in turn minimise manual intervention. By turning the procurement and invoice processes electronic, buyers can automatically match over 90% of incoming invoices against placed orders.

“With these new additions, Basware Connectivity is the first single purchase-to-pay solution that enables an organisation to move its entire procurement process into an electronic environment, fully integrated with existing stock and finance management systems,” said Matt Lees, Country Manager, Basware UK. “Every time a transaction moves from one system to another, whether within a single organisation or between supplier and customer, it adds delays in fulfillment and opens up possibilities for error. By automating these processes and moving to electronic document exchange with Basware Connectivity, buyers and suppliers can significantly reduce errors in the process, so get it right the first time around and halve their processing costs along the way.”

For the supplier, electronic processes reduce order delivery and invoicing cycle times dramatically, which in turn translate to quicker payments and improved cash flow. Suppliers can easily generate invoices directly from the order data which ensures full accuracy and eliminates the need for credit invoices.

Jyri Virtanen, logistics manager at Plandent, a dental supply company and Basware Connectivity customer added: “We receive around 450 orders each day, and with Basware Connectivity the entire process has become much faster and more efficient. Previously, a single order might contain 50 hand-written order rows, but with an electronic system we can easily receive consolidated orders. Basware Connectivity enables us to fulfill our customers’ orders quicker and has also substantially reduced error levels. Now, with the elimination of the delay resulting from manual ordering and shorter delivery times, we can focus more on actual customer service.”

About Basware
Basware is the global leader in purchase-to-pay solutions with more than 1,500 customers and 850,000 users in over 50 countries around the world. With Basware, organisations can reduce the cost of buying and paying for goods and services and gain visibility and control of their entire spending process by automating manual processes, from sourcing, contract management, purchasing and supplier collaboration to invoice automation.

Basware solutions and services enable substantial cost reductions across businesses and deliver value by providing compliance and control, as well as fast return on investment. The solutions are distributed and implemented, either on site or as a service, in Europe, the US, and Asia-Pacific through an extensive network of Basware offices and business partners.

http://www.basware.com

One of the world’s leading transport companies has selected ReadSoft as their supplier of choice for invoice automation. The solution involves the processing of over half a million invoices annually.

With a business system from SAP in place, this world-leading transport company already had good support for many of their business processes, but their accounts payable routines were still cumbersome and manual.

ReadSoft’s automated invoice handling solution for SAP was therefore a logical investment. The deal was made in the U.K. and the implementation will be carried out through a ReadSoft specialist partner.

ReadSoft’s solution will enable the company to automatically digitize incoming invoices, match the information against data in SAP to make sure it is correct, and approve the invoices in an electronic workflow. This will make accounts payable routines faster and less labor-intensive. The solution also includes extensive monitoring capabilities giving the company better control of their invoice flow.

“Multinational companies are one of our focus areas, and our solutions are well suited for handling the extensive requirements of such organizations,” comments Jan Andersson, CEO at ReadSoft. “Invoice processing in SAP is an area where we are very strong and this order is yet another proof of that. We are certain that this customer will get solid business value and substantially improved accounts payable processes in the years to come.”

www.readsoft.com

ISIS Papyrus has joined the OASIS group as Foundational Sponsor and demonstrates the highest level of commitment to open standards. With its support in advancing the work of OASIS, ISIS Papyrus enables the Consortium to fulfill its mission.
.
In the interest of our customers ISIS Papyrus will try to help move standards on SOA, XML(UBL, ebXML, IDtrust) and BPM forward.
http://www.oasis-open.org/about/foundational_sponsors.php

ISIS Papyrus participates as one of the leading parties in the development of Adaptive Case Management (ACM) within the Workflow Management Coalition. ACM provides the knowledge worker an adaptive process environment as opposite to traditional BPM that puts the knowledge worker into a straightjacket. Non-repeated, unpredictable, emergent work that requires knowledge work is everywhere: Court cases, disputes on invoices, procurement, audits, coordination, help desk, hiring to name a few requires adaptability in the execution.

ISIS Papyrus delivers an ACM solution framework that Papyrus Webrepository users can import, change and extend to their needs. BPMN 2.0 compatible but not a blackbox as traditional BPM vendors sell.

For more information visit our website http://www.isis-papyrus.com

On May 11th, 2010, the third invoice conference will take place in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.

A Belgian Invoice Conference is planned for the end 0f 2010. A European Invoice Conference (EEI Conference) is planned for early 2011. You can express your interest for sponsoring opportunities through info@factuurwijzer.nl.

The Invoice Conference 2010 has a unique format, developed by Factuurwijzer to create value for users, providers and policy makers,  more than regular conferences.

Download the sponsoring opportunities document

Target Audience
The primary target of the Invoice Conference 2010 includes both interested people as users from organisations with more than 10 employees, but smaller companies and ZOHO are welcome to visit the conference free of cost.

These visitors have free* access to the Invoice Conference 2010:
- financial director, manager and financial specialist
- heads employees of billing, accounts payable, accounts receivable departments
- CTO, CIO, IT manager
- policy maker
- controller, accountant
- heads employees of billing, accounts payable, accounts receivable departments
- manager eBusiness, manager eBilling of eInvoicing
- head of information services, head ICT automation
- head of (internal) audit, audit manager

and also:
- suppliers of financial software
- accountants and adminstration offices
- webshops
- creditmanagement organisations
- sectoral organisations

* Free access: using the access code issued after completely filling out the Invoice Monitor 2010. Without the access code the entrance fee is € 79,-. www.factuurmonitor.nl
* Free access for target group visitors from other countries than The Netherlands and Belgium.

Market place
On the biggest information market in the Benelux, service providers and users can exchange specific information and knowledge on e-invoicing and invoice automation. Unlike other conferences,  the visitors remain on the information market floor during the major part of the conference.

Golden Invoices
At the Invoice Conference 2010, best practices on e-invoicing and invoice automation are awarded five Golden Invoices. Four Golden Invoices are awarded by a professional and objective jury. The fifth Golden Invoice is awarded by the audience.

Invoice Monitor
Statistical information on e-invoicing and invoice automation is clearly analyzed and displayed. In the 2010 edition, the use and adoption e-invoicing and invoice automations by users is measured and compared with the situation in 2008.

Interaction before, during and after the Invoice Conference
The marketing ROI of the Invoice Conference starts well before the actual event, starting with the registration for the Golden Invoices 2010. During the Invoice Conference there are several great opportunities to contact the audience. After the Invoice Conference all information is proactively distributed to the visitors and the target group of the exhibitors and sponsors, using the (social) networks of our content partners.

The Invoice Conference 2010 is distinctive because of:

1. the Invoice Monitor 2010, worth € 500, – which is provided free to the visitors.
2. free entrance for target group visitors (users).
3. the award of the five ‘Golden Invoices” for best practices around e-invoicing and invoice automation.
4. the marketplace, created by the merger of conference and information market: efficient, compact and innovative.
5. marketing and communication of the Invoice Conference, the Golden Invoices and the Invoice Monitor will go through regular communication channels, as well as social networks and other online tools.
6. record of all exhibitors and sponsors in the first version of the Invoice Compass 2010.
7. repeating discount for exhibitors and sponsors. Discount for members of Platform ELFA when investing as an exhibitor.

And furthermore…

1. to determine the nominees of the Public price Golden Invoices 2010 in their respective categories.
2. the opportunity for everyone, to candidate an organisation for nomination of the Golden Invoices, even your own organisation.
3. by many opportunities for transferring knowledge and networking with colleagues, suppliers and other experts
4. through a ‘traffic-jam free’ program in an easily accessible location, including entry, lunch and dinner buffet.
5. because of an inspiring location: the Evoluon in Eindhoven

Important: the apps have a slight foucs on North American SME’s. But still: very interesting.

“AcceptPay is a new electronic invoicing service from American Express. It offers a free option for one user called AcceptPay Lite that allows you to email 10 invoices per month and maintain an unlimited number of customers in your account. The full version AcceptPay is $20/month and integrates with QuickBooks, accepts online payments, ACH, and eChecks.  I was impressed to see American Express entering this marketplace and putting some of their muscle into an online invoicing and billing solution. (Note: American Express is a sponsor of this site.)

Ballpark is an online invoicing service that believes the key component of any customer relationship revolves around communication. So, their dashboard tracks the back and forth dialogue between you, your customer, and your team. They offer a free personal plan and the small biz plans start at $6/month.

BambooInvoice is a free open source invoicing software for small business and independent contractor types. You load it on your own servers; it is not hosted like most of the others listed here. It offers a good online support forum as well.  This is the only open source application I’ve seen in this space and it is one to watch for that reason.

BillingBoss is a completely free online invoicing tool aimed at both freelancers and small business. It is owned and sponsored by Sage Software (owner of SageCRM, Peachtree and many other apps) and is both an outreach by them to serve the small biz owner and a very soft plug for their other products (which doesn’t diminish its functionality and value, in my book).  A really cool thing is you can use your existing merchant account with their Payment Plus option for $5/month. Again, the main invoicing tool is free.

BillingOrchard offers a highly recommended Auto-Invoicing feature that customers often talk about, so their solution is ideal for those with recurring billing needs. They offer a 15-day free trial and then a lite version at $9.95/month and $14.95 for standard. When you use the auto-invoice features, there is an additional cost per month, by number of transactions.

Blinksale targets small businesses and creative professionals who want to send well-formatted invoices easily. Their lowest price plan starts at $6 for 6 invoices a month, but you can have as many customers in the system as you want. It offers a free 30 day trial and integrates with Basecamp (the well known project management service).

CannyBill is a web-based billing and invoicing solution aimed at web designers or professionals, although it certainly has the features that most small business owners will want. It offers a fully functional free account with up to 10 invoices per month. Pricing ranges up to $48/month at the enterprise level.

Cashboard is a free financial time tracking service that lets you invoice, send estimates and accept payments online. They were quick to create desktop widgets for Mac and Windows as well as the iPhone so that you are not tied to a browser to manage your information. I found their pricing options just a bit confusing because most of the others listed here offer unlimited usage when you buy the paid version. With their “Dynamic” $10/month plan, you pay a bit extra for usage by employee and invoices. They offer a free for life plan, too.

CurdBee is online billing software for small business and freelancers. It offers a robust free level with unlimited invoicing and customers.  It allows you to accept Paypal and Google Checkout, too.  However, the free level invoices include a Curdbee logo, which seems fairly low key.  Curdbee Premium level is only $5 a month and lets you remove the Curdbee logo from emails and invoices.  The development team clearly thought about the customer with a demo that lets you take an in-depth look at the online invoicing service without even a trial. I give them a thumbs up for making it painless to learn more and for keeping it fast to make a decision.

Endeve positions itself as an invoice management service. It offers a forever free plan with an unlimited number of invoices and customers. The Professional Plan is $20/month and allows you to create Pay Now buttons with Paypal, customize your invoice layouts, and manage your expenses.

Enliven Software is for the larger small businesses out there. It is integrated with Microsoft Dynamics GP, Peachtree, and QuickBooks and automates accounts receivable and accounts payable processes for vendors and for customers. There was no pricing information available.

Freelance Total is online invoicing meets project management. Their web-based software allows you to take a client-centric approach to invoices as you manage the project. Plans start at $4.95 a month. It doesn’t say how long a free trial is, but it doesn’t collect billing information at signup.

Freshbooks is considered by many to be the market leader in Web-based online invoicing. It offers the standard features you’d expect, plus time tracking and the ability to manage subcontractors who are also working on your project. They integrate with other accounting and project management systems such as QuickBooks and Basecamp. They offer a fully free plan (some limitations) up to $149/month.  I have personally used Freshbooks and have found their service was elegant and easy to use. They have thought (for a long time) about their customers’ needs.

Invoice Journal is completely free. It doesn’t offer any pricing info and suggests it will be free forever.

The Invoice Machine is an elegant application. You can do all the standard online invoicing functions, but in the tour, I was impressed with the flexibility. You can add line items in your invoice manually or from the project time tracking tool with a few clicks. You can create an HTML email invoice or attach one as a PDF. They offer an always free plan up to $48/month.

InvoiceMore is an online billing and invoicing solution for freelancers, entrepreneurs, and businesses. It offers multiple features so that you can create, download, store, backup, print, and email PDF invoices to clients. You can track overdue balances. They offer a free plan all the way up to $99/month.

InvoicePlace is an easy online invoicing service. One of the things that caught my eye was the simple offer of showing a completed sample invoice, in what looks like a Microsoft Word document.  The tour explains the many features well. Free plan up to $20/month.

Invoicera offers invoices, estimates, and client reporting that you can use to track by specific product or service. You can add team members to a client and track their invoicing as well. Free plans, up to $149/month.

Invoices Made Easy offers an online invoicing service exclusively for small service-oriented trades.  From landscapers to consultants, they offer the standard online invoicing options, but they also have an “EasyMail” service which will send your invoice via postal mail. Free 30 day trial, then $9.95/month.

Invotrak is both an online invoicing and timesheet tracker. They offer good reporting tools as well as iPhone and iPod Touch apps. They have a limited Free plan up to an Unlimited plan at $45/month. It integrates with Basecamp.

LiteAccounting offers four simple plans from free up to $18/month. The dashboard shows three boxes front and center to keep you focused: Products/Services, Customers, and Invoices. They have a nice demo which answers most questions so you can decide without all the signup hassles.

Nett30 provides an online service for small businesses and contractors who need to make invoicing quick and user friendly. You can view real-time account summaries at any time. Send invoices as PDF, e-mail or have clients access them online. They have four plans: All unlimited. Free includes 5 clients up to Business Pro for $ 39 per month.

PaySimple is another market leader and focused on recurring online payments, including invoicing. They come at online payments with a Merchant Account background, so their service is oriented at credit card payments, ACH, eChecks, and online payment forms. They have a free setup (usually $129) and $34.95/month, then transaction fees. If you need the combination of merchant account and all the other pieces that you’ve read about here, they are worth a look.

Ronin is simple online invoicing product for freelancers all the way up to larger small businesses. Clients can log in to get their invoices or you can email them. You can try it out free without any worries of a time limit, but the free version is branded as powered by Ronin. After Free, plans range from $15/month up to $48/month.

SantexQ is a project management and time tracking tool that also lets you bill clients directly from the service. It offers web-based reporting, but also lets you export to Excel for customizing reports as you like. For a single user it is free, but limited, then only $9.95 per month for unlimited users.

Sbzone.com is a comprehensive online application suite combining sales, customer management, and accounting functions in one place. It offers a 30 day free trial and two plans: Limited Free plan and a $39.99/month.

Simplybill offers a clean interface and design to make the online invoicing process easy. The dashboard offers three tabs: Invoices, Quotes, and Clients. They offer the ability to keep in contact with your customers via reminders and thank you notes. There is the standard 30-day free trial, then $5/month up to $25/month. They have received excellent reviews and are worth a look.

Simplifythis is more than an online invoicing application. It starts with helping you book your appointments online and ties that data into the billing tool. It offers two services that start at $9/month: EasyBill and EasyBook. No credit card required for free 30 day trial. What I liked most about this service was that they have captured the attention of busy small biz owners who know something about technology or were not at all computer-savvy and still love the service. They have done of good job of making it useful for a range of skillsets and that’s not easy to do.

Simply Invoices follows their own name in concept for explaining what they do; they keep it simple. You can wrap your head around how they do things with a five step screenshot tour they offer, on one page. They offer a completely free plan up to $25/month.

Winkbill offers a robust online invoicing app at the free level all the way up to their platinum plan for $39.95/month. You can put your own logo on invoices with the free plan, but you can’t send them as a PDF. Loads of eye-catching templates you can use, too.”

From:  http://smallbiztrends.com/2010/01/30-online-invoicing-apps-for-small-businesses.html

As public authorities, the Commission and other EU administrations purchase goods and services. For this, the institutions follow procurement procedures, which lead to the conclusion of public contracts. Public contracts represent a part of the Community’s expenditure and cover several areas such as obtaining and fitting out offices for Commission departments, purchasing IT equipment, commissioning consultancy work or technical assistance.

Until now, most of the exchanges between the Commission and its suppliers have been made on paper. Invoices, as a case in point, are all sent by post mail. This is costly for the environment and handling all these documents throughout the procurement cycle takes considerable time, thus generating administrative delays.

IDABC Programme
DIGIT and DG MARKT joined forces in 2007 and, thanks to a funding of the IDABC Programme (Programme for the Interoperable Delivery of European eGovernment Services to public Administrations, Businesses and Citizens), they started an eProcurement project in collaboration with several Member States and Standardisation Bodies. Thanks to this project, the procurement process will be made electronically, thanks to a secure interface recognised by all parties.

Once a product has been delivered or a service has been provided, the Commission receives an invoice from its supplier. The first electronic invoice has now been sent to the Commission via an integrated interface using web services made accessible to the supplier. This was made possible thanks to the IT tools ‘e-Invoicing’ and ‘e-PRIOR’ designed for this purpose: e-Invoicing is one of the modules of the eProcurement suite and has gone live on 1 October 2009, following the approval of the system by the data centre in DIGIT, the product acceptance by the system owner, unit R.2 of DIGIT, and the ex-ante agreement by the Commission’s Accounting Officer.

Thanks to this system, the supplier is able to send a secured invoice and other attached documents in XML format via the Internet. The invoice is received by the e-PRIOR platform, which can then deliver the invoice to ’SYSLOG Invoice’, the local invoice management system used by DIGIT’s Unit R.2. Financial agents are able to see the invoice as any other paper invoice that would have been scanned, and can ensure the payment far more quickly. Exchanging invoices via a web interface saves paper and helps protect the environment. Since it is no longer necessary to scan the invoices and to create the invoice records manually in SYSLOG Invoice, it also lessens the number of human interactions, and therefore reduces payment delays.

Future
In the future, the eProcurement team will organise a roll-out in order first to broaden the production to more suppliers, and then to expand it to further clients within the Commission services. When other units in the Commission will use e-Invoicing, they can either use SYSLOG Invoice as a tool to manage invoices once received, or an interface will be developed between e-Invoicing and their own existing tool. The e-Invoicing module will also be interconnected with the other modules of the e-Procurement suite.

Furthermore, the e-Procurement model will be made available to be used by other administrations, and could also be applied to other areas where there is a need for sharing electronically secured and structured documents with third parties.

Environment
Regarding the environmental aspect of the projects, a study has been made by an external company showing that Belgium can save more than 15 000 tons paper and reduce its CO2 emission by 360 000 millions tons by using e-Invoicing instead of printed invoices. This calculation takes as average 900 millions invoices printed by year and a use of 50 % recycled paper.

Source: www.epractice.eu

The ECRN project is striving to become the European Service Platform for the Civil Registry with the establishment of an ECR_Platform among the Civil Acts Registries of National Administrations. It is implementing an ambitious policy of strategic cooperation with key players of the Civil Registry in Europe with the set-up of an experimental system designed to ensure the safe and certain identification of the Civil Acts (birth, death, marriage, divorce etc.) exchange. Together with the cooperation in the public arena, ECRN is active in cooperation with European market technology leaders of the Civil registry and Demographic Services in Europe.

At the moment the Civil Registry sector is undergoing in Europe a tremendous change process mainly due to the increasing number of expatriate in each Member State, and consequently a growing of demand of trans-national certifications. The ECRN initiative intends to reply strategically to this trend with an outstanding governance of the process i) aiming at strengthening the administrations’ ability to use new technologies, ii) increasing  the efficiency and effectiveness of the local administrative action in the European context while reducing costs, iii) improving the administration-citizen relationship by shortening the procedures for citizens’ civil status in 2-3 days and enabling citizens to reply in costs due time to request for documentation or certificates.

In the beginning of 2010, all the ECRN project consortium’s competences and skills are mobilised and running in order to fully achieve the ambitious project objectives; at the moment the technology platform is under intensive testing and the key functionalities are robust and are replying well to the severe pressure of the tests. The Administrations involved in the project (Italian Association of Civil registry officials, Municipality of Rotterdam, City Council Gent, Municipality of Bologna, Slovenian Ministry of Interior, Romanian Ministry of Communication and Information technology), are already using the platform functions for requesting, signing, sending, controlling, receiving and acknowledging receipt of Civil Registry documents.

To highlight, the ECRN Consortium is continuing to develop strong links with new potential customers and partners for its services, is continuing in the dissemination and advertisement of ECRN services, inviting new Administrations to enter in ECR Platform and to test its services, In addition, ECRN is dialoguing with other EC large projects to extend the cooperation and to build a large infrastructure of interoperable platforms, in order to exchange services together in a safe, secure, efficient and reliable way. For the upcoming months, the strategic cooperation to promote ECR Platform will be intensified, with the involvement of additional countries and players, both from the institutional and market sectors. They will pave the way for high value market services in the strategic sector of the Administrations in the whole Europe.

If you are interested, please subscribe on-line in http://www.ecrn.eu
The movie about the ECRN services http://www.ecrn.eu/site_movie.exe
Antonio D’Amico, ECRN, Rome (antonio.damico@ecrn.eu)

This month the EEI Platform launched its community. It is the biggest effort till date in delivering as much news on e-invoicing and invoice automation as possible on our readers’ doorstep.

Instead of requesting you – our community members- to visit the site, we allow to consume information the way you want it.  An overview of what we have in store for you to get jiggy with the EEI Platform.

LinkedIN
Our linkedIN group is growing rapidly. This month alone we’ve welcomed no less than 28 professionals. You can find our LinkedIN group here: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=715727&trk=anet_ug_grppro

RSS
Our RSS feed includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. RSS feeds benefit you to subscribe to timely updates from our website and other favoured sites into one place. Subscribe to out:

-  front page feed: http://eeiplatform.com/feed/
-  comment feed: http://eeiplatform.com/comments/feed/

SlideShare
SlideShare is our beloved instrument to easily distribute and embed documents and presentations about e-invoicing and invoice automation at www.eeiplatform.com and in our social networks.

Take a look here:
-  http://www.slideshare.net/FrisodeJong (apologies for the personal touch there)
-  http://www.slideshare.net/search/slideshow?searchfrom=header&q=electronic+invoicing

Twitter
Yep, Twitter. First we started using Twitter for linkdumps only, but now we are using it as an intelligent form of chat with other professionals like @jensjakob and @hippebrun. And we recently started using www.tweetalarm.com to discover the latest tweets all over the world on e-invoicing. Actually Twitter allows us and YOU to stay on top of the news on e-invoicing! Take a peek at:
www.twitter.com/einvoicing

Google Friend Connect
What? Google Friend Connect: the second latest addon to our site. Google Friend Connect makes registration simple, letting you sign in to your website with your existing account information (e.g. Google, Yahoo, AOL) spending less time filling in forms, and more time exploring and commenting our site.

Take a look at the bottom of our site. This members bar also allows you to create or import profiles (e.g. Twitter), discover other users, and send private messages to each other.

Google News
Google News added the EEI Platform to its Google News enhancing visibility on e-invoicing and invoice automation news items
http://news.google.com/

EEI Community
And of course our very own EEI Community. All EEI and ELFA members have their own profile and so can you. Giving you and your organisation a bit of extra SEO on e-invoicing and invoice automation. Its free of charge and easy, with no strings attached!

Take a look at the right hand side of our website to discover some of the more than 80 profiles registered these past few weeks already. Or go to http://www.eeicommunity.com and register.

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:

Basware, the global leader in purchase-to-pay solutions, today announced it has signed a project agreement with Cortex and Apache Corporation. The joint solution will utilize Basware’s Invoice Automation solutions and the Cortex Trading Partner Network to reach Apache’s top suppliers in North America.

“The joint solution offered through our partnership with Cortex will enable Apache to strengthen its supplier relationships and provide the company with improved efficiency and transparency throughout its financial supply chain,” said Ari Salonen, general manager, North America, Basware, Inc.

“Our automated solutions, combined with Cortex interoperability network, make it easier for an increasing number of companies to embrace electronic e-invoicing and to reap the benefits that can be gained from eliminating manual invoicing processes.”

“We are impressed to see immediate results from our agreement with Basware. This project with Apache is one example of the work we are doing in growing our network and expanding our supplier relationships across North America,” said Ryan Lailey, Vice President of Business Development at Cortex.

“Not only is this our third major buying organization to join our Network this year, but this project will also continue our momentum in the marketplace with other large buying organizations. Our Trading Partner Network and support services continue to deliver superior value for our clients in a reliable, low cost, low risk implementation.”

Apache will be able to receive e-invoices from its suppliers via Cortex, which will be processed using Basware’s Invoice Automation solutions. This process automation will streamline the invoicing process, and minimize the time and money spent manually handling invoices.

Basware’s global e-invoicing network includes more than 60 partners in the U.S., Europe and Scandinavia, providing direct connections around the world, and transmitting more than nine million transactions annually.

About Apache
Apache Corporation is an independent oil and gas exploration and production company with operations in the United States, Canada, Egypt, the United Kingdom North Sea, Australia and Argentina. Apache posts announcements, updates and investor information, in addition to copies of all recent press releases, on its Web site, www.apachecorp.com.

About Cortex Business Solutions Inc.
Cortex Business Solutions Inc. is an industry leading service company that improves efficiencies, reduces costs and streamlines procurement and supply chain processes for its customers. Accessing the Cortex Trading Partner Network enhances the exchange of business critical documents, such as purchase orders, receipts and invoices resulting in improved cash flow management and business controls, while reducing day’s outstanding and administrative costs. Cortex is a low cost, low risk solution that can be implemented quickly by leveraging its customers existing business environment. More information can be found at www.cortex.net.

About Basware
Basware is the global leader in purchase-to-pay solutions with more than 1,500 customers and 850,000 users in over 50 countries around the world. With Basware, organizations can reduce the cost of buying and paying for goods and services and gain visibility and control of their entire spending process by automating manual processes, from sourcing, contract management, purchasing and supplier collaboration to invoice automation.

Basware solutions and services enable substantial cost reductions across businesses and deliver value by providing compliance and control, as well as fast return on investment. The solutions are distributed and implemented, either on site or as a service, in Europe, the U.S., and Asia-Pacific through an extensive network of Basware offices and business partners. The company’s U.S. business, Basware, Inc., is headquartered in Stamford, Conn. More information can be found at www.basware.com/us.

Multilingual: English +Dutch and/or French

Prince2/PMI certification is considered an advantage.

You will be responsible for the project delivery and managing the project(s) to increase my clients involvement in electronic invoicing in the Belgian market as well as performing business analysis tasks.

Tasks include:

• Lead and accountability for total project.
• Control and follow-up of project budget and planning
• Detailed planning and progress reporting
• Review of key project deliverables
• Manage risks/issues/changes within the project
• Coordinate project milestone reviews & project close-out
• Organize hand-over to Business
• Business analysis
• Report and co-ordinate with all stakeholders on all project activities
• Manage and coach project team
• Ensure communication within the project, including reporting of progress, budget, issues/risks, scope  evolution.

If you have the above experience and you speak fluent French and/or Dutch then please send your CV. Shortlisted candidates will be contacted with more information.

Location: Brussels, Belgium
Country: Belgium
Start Date: ASAP
Duration: 1 year +
Employment Business: Target Recruitment
Contact: Matthew Kimberley
Telephone: +32 (0)2 533 2274
Email: Matthew.Kimberley.C2891.14518@mail.jobserve.com
Web Link: http://www.targetrecruitment.eu
Reference: JS/MK/0670/PME
Posted Date: 12/02/2010 16:51:36

www.gtnews.com
Joanna Andersen, Nordea – 9 Feb 2010

The volume of received B2C e-invoices in Nordea Bank Finland grew 1000% in 2008. In 2009, the total volume of e-invoices in Nordea grew 140%. So far in 2010, we can see intensification as new parties are joining the scheme every day. At national level, the increase is now between 10-20 % every month in Finland. So it is easy to agree with the results of the gtnews Cash Management Survey 2009 – accounts receivable are also in the limelight in the Nordic region.

The challenging process restructuring efforts are starting to pay off for our corporate customers: better usage of working capital, process efficiency improvements, cost savings and improved carbon footprint are becoming visible and are appreciated by both customers and shareholders.
(…)

This article was published by gtnews and can be read entirely on
http://www.gtnews.com/article/7895.cfm

OB10, the world’s leading e-Invoicing network, announced results for a strong 2009, showing significant growth at a time when many companies have struggled to remain viable in the midst of economic uncertainty.

OB10 highlighted figures from a successful 2009 with the signing of a number of new customers, including 14 new global corporate customers, a significant increase in the number of suppliers on its network and a 65 percent increase in daily network transactions – all resulting in an increase in revenue of more than 40 percent. The increase in revenue is particularly impressive in light of overall industry growth of only 1 percent in 2009 (see also OB10).

“An increasing number of organizations are looking for services that improve cash flow, reduce operating costs and help them meet strict financial objectives,” said Jamie Gunn, CEO – OB10. “By providing a smooth transition for corporations and their suppliers to move to electronic invoicing, coupled with excellent customer service, OB10 is well-positioned to continue its growth in 2010 and beyond.”

New network members
Among the companies that joined the OB10 network in 2009 are British Energy, Dr. Pepper, Hertz, Kraft, Pfizer and Tesco. In addition, Schneider Electric, based on the success of its e-Invoicing rollout in North America during the previous 18 months, agreed to expand its relationship in 2009 by making OB10 the global standard for all its electronic invoicing and related services. Furthermore, existing customers such as Tyco International and DHL renewed their contracts in 2009 to either broaden the scope of their supplier reach across additional countries or increase their invoice volume.

“Schneider Electric has realized significant benefit by implementing OB10’s e-invoicing solution,” said Pam Carper, Manager of Disbursements – Schneider Electric USA, Inc. “In addition to cost savings, we’ve reduced errors and cycle times, increased our straight through processing capability and positioned Schneider Electric as a more efficient producer and distributor of energy.”

Benefits
As stated in the 2010 PayStream Advisors Survey Report, the biggest benefit of automating the invoice receipt process is fewer lost or missing invoices, according to an overwhelming 58 percent of companies [participating in the survey]. Another significant benefit of e-invoicing, experienced by 55 percent of respondents, was quicker approval cycles…showing that that electronic invoice receipt, combined with automated matching and approval workflow, can shrink approval cycle times from 23 days or more to as little as five days.

In addition to securing new global corporate customers, OB10 expanded its partnerships in the last year to include Broadlane, Perceptive Software and Imagitek in the U.S. as well as a global partnership with Genpact. With the combination of additional customers and partners, OB10 has secured valuable and mutually beneficial relationships on multiple fronts.

Impressive results
“The past year’s results demonstrate how hard our team has worked despite the difficult economic climate,” added Gunn. “By strengthening our operation in Atlanta, London, Kuala Lumpur and in particular Sophia, Bulgaria, we provide complete in-house, end-to-end implementation and management services to our existing customers as well as a number of blue-chip brands we’ve added to our portfolio of clients. Building relationships with companies such as Tesco, Kraft and Genpact has been indicative of the kind of success we have achieved during the past year. We’re confident of delivering equally impressive results this year, as the market for e-Invoicing continues to mature. Early signs are encouraging as corporations look to increase their indirect spend and the economic cycle begins to show improvement.”

www.ob10.com

This survey forms part of the UN/CEFACT eBGT Gap analysis projects.

For several years the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (CEFACT) has been developing a set of electronic standards for international trade data.

Progress has been slower than had been hoped for, and CEFACT is currently reassessing stakeholder needs and priorities to ensure that its work is addressing the most urgent requirements.

CEFACT has formed three project teams to report quickly on:

• The current needs of stakeholders for open international standards for electronic international trade data messages; and which standards stakeholders would like CEFACT to deliver as priorities; “stakeholders” answering questions are likely to be those who are users or implementers of message standards;

• An assessment of the knowledge that stakeholders have in the CEFACT Core Component Library (CCL), which contains the data elements needed to complete messages, and the usability or otherwise of the CCL; “stakeholders” are likely to be organisations involved in developing standards for their own industry/region and implementers of message standards;

• The technical specifications that underpin message assembly and assure messages can be interpreted by different systems; “stakeholders” are likely to be the organisations involved in developing technology infrastructure standards, technology users and implementers of message standards.

CEFACT is consulting those already involved in CEFACT’s work as well as a selection of stakeholders that are not, in order to submit a report to CEFACT by the end of February 2010.

The project teams would like your urgent responses to a set of questions that address these issues, by 28 February 2010 at the latest. You are asked to complete only those that are of interest or relevance to your organisation.

The survey is available here

Source: UN/CEFACT

The PEPPOL project is the next EU initiative to grow e-invoicing in its garden. The vision of the PEPPOL project is to have solutions that make it possible for economic operators in any European country to send invoices electronically to any European entity.

The deliverables will include aspects such as software building blocks that will lower organizational, semantic and technical barriers, benchmarking and good practices will be highlighted and communicated.

Cooperation with other initiatives
The project will use previous work in the area and seek cooperation with current initiatives such as CEN ISSS eInvoicing 2/3, CEN ISSS WS/BII and the eInvoicing Expert Group. The CEN BII WS/BII has already established a WG for cooperation with pilot projects. The objective of the workshop and the timeframe of three years make it a perfect cooperation partner. The objective of the eInvoicing Expert Group is also a significant reason to seek cooperation with this group.

Main goal
The main goal of the PEPPOL project on e-invoicing is to implement a European eInvoicing (EEI) framework that allows SME’s to adopt eInvoicing in an effective way to lower their cost of entry and operating costs. The expected impact is said to demonstrate the e-invoicing business case and act as a catalyst for full adoption of eInvoicing through piloting (part of) a European eInvoicing Framework.

Current results
The results of the PEPPOL project until now are quite interesting:

• eInvoicing: Pilot Specifications

• Test, Evaluation and Pilot Execution Guidelines

• eInvoicing: Test Guidelines

• Evaluation Guidelines

• D5.1c: Pilot Ecexution Guidelines

A good thing
With this main goal of the PEPPOL project on e-invoicing in mind, it is a good thing that they aim at cooperating with other initiatives. An effective cooperation between these initiatives could actually facilitate a faster uptake of e-invoicing in Europe and could therefore be really worthwhile. We are looking forward to the results of the PEPPOL project and the synergy from cooperation.

The last few weeks the EEI Platform developed its activity plan for the year 2010. Because al the instruments and activities mentioned in the 2009 activity plan were carried out completely, we asked our community to give feedback in an online poll on what activities and instruments should be part of the 2010 EEI Platform Activity plan and carried out accordingly.

And the feedback was overwhelming. The result is an ambitious plan for 2010 which is currently available for download and review. The deadline is 31 March 2010.

So, take a look at our concept activity plan and let us know if there is anything you’d like to see added or changed.

(And yes, as quite a few of you mentioned we also think to believe that we’ve developed a good impact ratio per euro. We can only imagine what an extra bit of funding would do…)

[download] CONCEPT EEI Platform Activity 2010

The recently renewed EEI Platform website has set up an online community. The European Electronic Invoicing Platform is a co-operation of organisations that play a role in the market for electronic invoicing.

This community now welcomes both those who are interested in e-invoicing (or invoice automation) and parties who offer products and services in the field of e-invoicing.

As e-invoicing is encouraged across national borders, the EEI Platform is now part of a larger community which brings together users, experts and providers from across Europe.

The communities of Platform ELFA (NL) and EEI Platform (Europe) are linked, creating a large free of charge community for anyone who wishes to contact (future) users, experts, providers, suppliers and policy makers. Soon, the newly set up EEI Platform Belgium is expected to be added to this community. The mission of this community is to give e-invoicing and invoice automation an extra impulse in the Netherlands, Belgium and of course Europe.