This is no small task and it requires not only the proper use of technology but also change. Change in our Ways of Working (WoW) and change in our corporate culture. It requires change in the way we think. This is perhaps the hardest challenge of all. Going paperless and the change required to get there.

The technology is here but is your corporate culture ready for it? That is the true question and the reason we have put this simple guide together for you. We have identified a few simple things you can do today that will help you move toward a paperless business operation and help the world go paperless. Help us to improve this list of tips.

Add your tips, comment on these, modify them. Let’s make this practice into a ‘best’ practice together!

1. Use document scanners to convert paper documents to electronic format through document scanning then shred them – if allowed by law and industry – and send the shredded paper for recycling
2. Do not print or copy any documents unless absolutely required. Send all documents via e-mail or electronic fax as the preferred method to your customers.
3. If you do have to print, be sure to spell/grammar check before you print to eliminate reprinting. Also, try saving or printing to PDF instead.
4. Use Web 2.0 technologies like wikis and blogs for internal communication and collaboration
5. Use single source repositories and shared digital workspaces to develop, manage and refine documents like contracts, marketing materials and any other type requiring review and refinement
6. Use web interfaces and forms for online applications and order placement, replace paper forms with eForms
7. Sign up for e-bill delivery or online billing from your suppliers rather than paper statements, and pay your bills electronically
8. Develop and deliver all promotional materials in electronic form rather than paper using links and downloads for online and thumb drives or CD media at tradeshows and seminars
9. Map, design and manage all business processes electronically. You can begin by mapping the processes and assessing how they can be improved as they are, then address process automation using what you currently own and/or may purchase
10. When a signature is required, match the signature solution to the signature requirements. While “click-wrap” is the easiest and most common, there are numerous options. Electronic signature tablets similar to those used in retail are one option; you can even get them sophisticated enough to capture the unique biometric characteristics of each individual for future comparison if the signature is questioned
11. Sign up for the digital versions of all trade magazines and newsletters, and make sure others in your organization do the same
12. Use direct Printed Barcode on the corrugated boxes or on the Product manual or use other Emboss technique for object tagging & Retrieving on the product itself instead of separate Paper based barcode stickers.
13. Paper is widely used between Business to Customer, Business to Business, Government to Business Vise Versa, and Customer to Business for day to day transaction purposes. Government & Corporate have to frame policy & implement paper less processes. Elevate, educate and provide Hands-on support to the non IT savvy customers to use self service applications. This Reduce paper transaction cost, Increase customer base through customer satisfaction.
14. Outsource paper document digitization to a document imaging company. You may get more cost benefit outsourcing to a company that focuses entirely on scanning than trying to keep the scanning in house.
15. Where possible convert your paper based data capture to e-Forms.
16. Encourage end users to upload scanned copies instead of mailing the documents

Use the above tips and join us for World Paperfree Day, October 28, 2010

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: Thursday 28th of October: World Paper Free Day!.

After the completion of the CEN/ISSS eInvoicing Phase I Workshop in 2006, a Phase II workshop was launched in 2007. Now, during the Open Meeting on June 18th 2009, the final deliverables of this Phase II will be presented to reach out for public comments and reviews.

CEN/ISSS e-Invoicing Phase II: five Working Groups

Five projects have gone under way, with Working Groups:

1.      An adoption programme for increased electronic invoicing in European business processes

2.      Compliance of electronic invoice implementations with Council Directive 2001/115/EC and the national legislation as regards electronic invoices;

3.      Cost effective authenticity and integrity of electronic invoices and related business documents regardless of formats and technologies;

4.      Implementation of compliant electronic invoice systems in using emerging technologies and business processes;

5.      A framework for the emerging network infrastructure of ‘invoice operators’ throughout Europe.
Resulting in several deliverables, the Working Groups and the entire CEN e-Invoicing Workshop aim to stimulate further standardisation in the domain of electronic invoicing in Europe. It should be noted that the activities are explicitly not directed towards standardisation of a document format such as UN/CEFACT or UBL.
What kind of deliverables can we expect?
So what kind of results can we expect at the Open Meeting on June 18th 2009? To get answer on that question we could take a look at the presentations performed during the Open Meeting in 2008.

In short – to be honest: as far as the EEI Platform can see- it is expected that at least the following deliverables will be presented:

-          The Draft Good Practice Guidelines (Working group 2 and 3)

-          E-invoice Gateway (Working group 1)

-          Review of CWA 15576 (Working group 4)

-          Review CWA 15582 (Working group 4)
NOTE: The EEI Platform has been chair of Working group 4 for some time. It resigned from this position due to a conflict of co-operation with one of the Workshop chairs and a difference of vision with regard to the expected deliverables and their content. The EEI Platform proposed to deliver:

-          A Common Body of Definitions

-          An Interaction Framework

-          An E-invoicing Innovation Guideline
Progress put into perspective
So what progress has been achieved during the last twelve months? The only way to find out is to go the CEN/ISSS e-Invoice Open Conference. But not before you had a chance to look the presentations from 2008. That way you could put the new information en statements into perspective:

2008 – Working Group 1
Raising awareness of electronic invoices

2008 – Working Group 2
Overview on compliance of electronic invoices

2008 – Working Group 2:
Compliance of electronic invoices

2008 – Working Group 2:
Legal and regulatory inhibitors

2008 – Working Group 3:
Cost effective means to guarantee authenticity & integrity

2008 – Working Group 4:
Emerging technologies and business processes

2008 – Working Group 5:
Interconnection of service providers

With the final deliverables, the CEN e-Invoicing Workshop has stimulated further standardization work in the domain of electronic invoices in Europe, with a view to supporting:
- the compliance of electronic invoice implementations to Council Directive 2001/115/EC and the national legislation as regards electronic invoices;
- the effective implementation of compliant electronic invoice systems in using emerging technologies and business processes, in business-to-business as well as in business-to-government scenarios; and
- the emerging network infrastructure of invoice operators throughout Europe.

The eInvoicing Workshop Phase II is mandated by the European Commission to provide advice on the European electronic invoice implementation process. With more than 60 companies actively participating, the Workshop has become the sounding board of the electronic invoice industry – comprising software companies, service providers, end-users as well as tax authorities (e.g. Spain, NL, UK, Italy, Romania).

CEN/ISSS conference “Electronic Invoices & Compliance”
JUNE 18th, 2009 10:00 – 17:00 CET
DIAMANT BUILDING
Boulevard Reyers 80, 1030 BRUSSELS, Belgium

The Open Conference is free of charge !
For participation, please register before 10 June at: http://www.cen.eu/isss/meetings

If you have any question about the registration, please contact:
Emmanuelle Ramaz, Workshop Assistant CEN,
Innovation & Business Development Department
e-mail: emmanuelle.ramaz@cen.eu
Tel + 32 2 550 08 13

Agenda

09:30 Arrival and registration
10:00 Welcome and introduction CEN Secretary General Stefan Engel-Flechsig & Anders Grangard (CEN/ISSS Workshop Co-Chairs),
10:15 Perspectives on e-Business (Welcome note by the European Commission, DG Enterprise)
10.30 Summary of the Phase II results: Stefan Engel-Flechsig
11.00 WG2: Overview on compliance of electronic invoices – Joost Kuipers
11.15 WG2: CEN Compliance Guidelines – Christiaan van der Valk
11.45 WG2: Legal and regulatory inhibitors – Tony Nisbett

12:15 Lunch break

13:15 WG : Cost effective means to guarantee authenticity & integrity – Johan Borendal & Nick Pope
14:00 WG 4: Emerging technologies and business processes – Anders Grangard & Adrian Mueller
14:45 WG 5: Interconnection of service providers – Ahti Allikas & Jari Salo

15.30 Coffee & tea

16.00 WG 1: Raising awareness of electronic invoices – Georg Lindsberger & Helmut Aschbacher
16:30 Final discussions and recommendations from the audience
17:00 Wrap-up, close of meeting & networking

For participation please register before 10 June at: http://www.cen.eu/isss/meetings

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: CEN/ISSS E-invoice final deliverables June 18th – What to expect?.

-          Enhanced adoption of electronic invoicing in business processes in Europe;

-          Compliance of electronic invoice implementations with Council Directive 2001/115/EC and Directive on the Common
   System of Value Added Tax (2006/112/EC) as well as Member States’ national legislation as regards electronic
   invoicing

-          Cost-effective authentication and integrity of electronic invoices regardless of formats and technologies

-          Effective implementation of compliant electronic invoice systems in using emerging technologies and business
   processes and

-          Emerging network infrastructure of invoice operators throughout Europe.

TG2 and TG3: The Draft Good Practice Guidelines

TG 2 (compliance of electronic invoice implementations) and TG 3 (cost effective authentication and integrity) decided to cooperate and created the Draft Good Practice Guidelines. The Draft Good Practice Guidelines identify two major obstacles when it comes to the regulatory aspects of e-invoicing adoption.

First, “businesses that implement electronic invoicing are often faced with thousands of technical and process implementation options along the way. In the absence of implementation-relevant rules emanating from tax administrations or standards bodies, the uncertainty surrounding these many choices creates a significant barrier to investment in electronic invoicing. As a result, for those vendors and users that choose to invest nevertheless, it is hard to make any value judgment as to how “compliant” their services and solutions are. Corporate e-invoicing users, Service Providers and solution vendors that are taking steps to develop and maintain VAT-compliant services naturally have a desire to have to a concrete yardstick against which to measure and with which to demonstrate their compliance.”

Second, nowadays “most tax administrations do not provide accreditation services or self-assessment programmes to assist e-invoicing users or their Service Providers to ascertain that e-invoicing systems are VAT-compliant. Tax administrations’ audit methodologies and tools are often developed based on the experiences of law enforcement and not widely propagated to businesses as compliance checklists.”

How it works

As stated above, the Draft Good Practice Guidelines seek to reduce some of the principal areas of uncertainty and resulting inefficiencies on the e-invoicing market with one single set of good practice Guidelines for both businesses and tax administrations.

It consists of two documents: one word document and one Excel sheet.

The Word document provides context to the Excel document and tries to explain how one should use the Excel. The Excel sheet identifies the main issues in question at each processing step during the life cycle of an electronic invoice for different invoicing methods (direct invoicing from Supplier to Buyer as well as Self-Billing) and provides detailed process guidance for a variety of implementation options including web publication, the use of various integrity and authenticity-enhancing methods and the retention of electronic invoices.

The Excel sheet takes into account:

-          who directs the e-invoicing process

-          whether an intermediate party is involved

-          the possibility of a self billing variant

-          the method being used to guarantee authenticity and integrity: EDI, digital signatures, other instruments

-          the predefined (business) process steps necessary to perform e-invoicing

Based on your choices in these variables, the Excel sheet should be able to present you:

-          the inherent tax risks that your organisation poses when initiating e-invoicing based on the choices made.

-          the tax requirements necessary or even obligatory needed to address the risks

-          the controls or solutions that should be in place to ensure the risks are avoided

Concluding remarks
The Draft Good Practice Guidelines are very promising, as they are intended to rule out uncertainty on e-invoicing form a legal/VAT/compliance perspective.But there are some downsides to this version of the Draft Good Practice Guidelines.

Hence the only two percepted barriers to full scale adoption of e-invoicing: standardisation and awareness, would remain.

First of all the Excel sheet does not, or at least not very easily, provide the results needed for an organisation get a sense of safety. It might be a good idea to create a database version that is much more accessible.

Second, this Draft Good Practice Guideline is still a concept. Or as the Word document states: “These Guidelines and Commentary are a work in progress and out for review. While every effort has been made to ensure consistency with legal requirements that apply to e-invoicing in the European Union, no guarantees of legal compliance or fitness for purpose are made by the drafters or CEN; any use of these documents is at the user’s own risk”.

Download the Draft Good Practice Guidelines (Word)
Download the Draft Good Practice Guidelines (Excel)

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: Draft Good Practice Guidelines: how to comply with e-invoicing regulations?.

The study will produce a selection tool to generate scenarios for the organisation of the e-invoicing infrastructure. The selection tool will take account of such considerations as organisational aspects (whether the work is done in-house or outsourced), security (the authenticity and integrity of the invoice) and invoice validation and transformation.

The project will run for ten weeks, with the final report being presented to the Ministry in mid-August.

For more information: Bob.Hulsebosch@telin.nl or Paul.OudeLuttighuis@telin.nl

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: Infrastructures for electronic invoicing in B2G transactions.