It is! It’s not! Yes it is! No way! You’re a nutcase! You stop this nonsense NOW!

(The real abbreviation here is Pdf, but we use PDF for readability purposes)

Myth

There are digital and electronic invoices. In fact there is a difference between electronic and digital. But that distinction is different from what you’d think in the first place. Whereas ‘Electronic ‘ is a legal term, ‘Digital’ is a manifestation of an electronic invoice. Just as with signatures. An example:

”” The legal term is ‘ electronic signature ‘. A manifestation of an electronic signature is a digital signature. A digital signature can be a picture, which usually is not legally valid. A qualified digital certificate provides an advanced electronic signature: a signature which may be granted a great deal of legal guarantees. Validity is one of these guarantees.””

That distinction was and has never been made with regard to e-invoices. In short: a digital invoice is an e-invoice and vice versa.

Fact

An invoice that is not carried by a paper medium (read: a paper sheet), is an electronic invoice. A PDF invoice is not carried by a paper medium and therefore it is an electronic invoice.  See as an example the recent European e-invoice directive.

Fact

Statistically PDF and e-mail are used and mentioned most often throughout years as the primary means for e-invoicing throughout most of the business populations over the world.

Just imagine saying to those that the way they are e-invoicing isn’t really e-invoicing. Or rather that they are in fact e-invoicing, not in the real sense. Because that’s different. Or so. Because that’s what is actually the truth! Right?

Fact

A PDF is created by a PDF printer. A printer can only generate output if the input also is structured. A PDF is a visual reference of structured information. Despite it’s beautiful appearance, a PDF is build on top of structured data.

Myth and fact

PDF invoices are less advanced than data formats as UBL 2.0 … That is a myth. Because a PDF document is a representation of structured data, it can also be used for importing structured data.

There are many  examples that offer the ability of importing/processing PDF invoices directly into financial software. (Yes, it requires a few more mouse clicks than straight through processing. Has anyone calculated those costs for SME’s yet?)

The fact is that there are very little good while low-cost products implemented (especially for SME’s) to import PDF invoices (invoices and in other readable formats), directly into accounting software.

Conclusion

It sometimes seems like the PDF invoice aren’t getting the credits they deserve.  Yes, e-invoicing can get much more advanced than with PDF.

But as more and more companies and organizations transition to e-invoicing, massive numbers start with sending PDF.

So, aren’t PDF e-invoices a great starting point for (1) massive adoption of e-invoicing and (2) a transition to more efficient forms of e-invoicing?

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: [Discussion] 7 facts and myths about PDF invoices.

21^st February 2011: Accelya, an expert in electronic invoicing and paperless financial flows, has been chosen by DILICOM, an interprofessional service in the field of books, to develop its DILIFAC invoicing platform.

Objectives: boost the number of tax-compliant electronic invoices in structured format to 1 million, and double this number by the end of 2012 thanks to e-invoices in PDF format.

DILICOM is extending its electronic invoicing project to signed PDF and, on that occasion, is changing operator. The new operator is Accelya, a specialist in electronic invoicing and paperless flows, which was chosen in 2010 as a result of an invitation to tender. This reinforces a strong partnership between DILICOM and Accelya dating back almost 20 years.  The objective is to reach a total of 2 million tax-compliant electronic invoices within two years.

DILICOM is an interprofessional company which facilitates the development of electronic exchanges between actors in the book industry – publishers, distributors and booksellers – in France, Belgium and Luxembourg. It works with a network of 15,000 publishers, 8000 bookshops and 1500 distributors for more than one million titles in its electronic catalogue.

The DILICOM platform not only allows any bookshop located in France or abroad to place orders with all the distributors supplying the majority of what the French publishing market has to offer, but also to see the book descriptions, check availability, receive dispatch notes, etc. This platform is the result of a partnership of almost twenty years with Accelya, since its launch at the start of the 90s, passing through hosting, message handling, maintenance, development of new activities… Today for example, 95 million lines of orders and 45 million lines of dispatch notes are issued each year on the platform.

DILICOM thought of electronic invoicing for its clients in 2004 and the first electronic invoices were sent at the end of 2006.  At the end of 2009, the company hoped to extend its electronic invoicing perimeter to offer, in addition to tax-compliant electronic invoicing in structured format, tax-compliant e-invoicing in signed PDF to new clients. This new project would be the subject of an invitation to tender which would evolve into a global invitation to tender a few months later that was won by Accelya.

“Over almost 20 years, we have developed a strong link with Accelya.  We wanted to find again strong customer relationships in this project, to manage electronic invoices and their follow-up in a much more flexible way, and to develop economies of scale between our traditional activities and electronic invoicing. We needed a true partnership to develop electronic invoicing”, explains Vincent Marty, General Manager of DILICOM.

After a few months of development, the project was migrated on 1^st January 2011. “Reversibility exists contractually but we seem to be acting as pioneers in the field.  This project has had 2 sensitive aspects to take into account: DILICOM is the operator for actors in the book world, in other words bookshops and publishers, and it involved migrating the entirety of one of our activities, so there could be no interruption in the service “, adds Vincent Marty.

Today DILICOM dematerialises more than 730,000 invoices in structured format.  The objective is to reach 900,000 to 1 million invoices in structured format in the near future, and to reach the same number much more quickly thanks to signed PDF, in order to double the number of electronic invoices within 2 years.

By the end of 2012, with the help of Accelya, DILICOM should have dematerialised almost 2 million invoices for 30 to 50 distributors, out of the 1500 members on the DILICOM platform.

Accelya

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: DILICOM chooses Accelya to roll out its e-invoicing project.

Electronic invoicing is one of the key services of Edicom in both Europe and (Latin) America, according Frank Lodewijks, Key Account Manager at Edicom.

For both outgoing EDI & PDF invoices (eventually signed with an advanced digital signature and/or time stamp code) and incoming EDI / PDF or paper invoices, Edicom offers via her ASP / SaaS services solutions in order to reduce operational costs and contribute to a greener environment.

Electronic invoicing in many countries still is accompanied by ´cold water fear´, but in some cases local laws speed up the acceptance. For instance in Latin America in many countries, by law companies by law need to invoice electronically above a certain amount (i.e. € 200,=) all invoices, signed with a digital signature and/or time stamp code in order to report directly at the local TAX department.

In Europe we see more and more that large retailers obligate their suppliers to only send electronic (EDI) invoices and many manufactures who deliver via whole sales channels almost for 100% send out electronic invoices.

With over 7000 customers worldwide and 17 year of experience in many sectors, Edicom happily wants to advice your company what solution fits the best your business needs and how we integrate in an easy way with your ERP / invoicing software system.

Edicom Group

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: More than 5000 customers of Edicom use the EDIWIN Platform.

Billable is ridiculously simple. When you visit the Billable website you’ll be able to click in any field and start typing. Once you’re done entering all your info, you can print your invoice or save it as a PDF. Pretty simple, and definitely useful if you ever need to create a quick invoice.

Source: Lifehacker

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: Billable makes creating an e-invoice ridiculously quick and simple.

Anachron, the leading e-Billing supplier in Europe, was selected by Multi Service Europe to develop an e-Billing solution for Multi Service Europe. The e-Billing application is integrated within the online customer portal of Multi Service Europe.

Rutger Gassner, Managing Director Multi Service Europe explains the reasons for e-Invoicing: “Multi Service Europe delivers customized solutions for billing and payment systems in the transportation industry throughout Europe. Our customers can view and download detailed information regarding their transaction online within our customer portal. In order to enhance our customer service even more we decided to implement a solution to present invoices online within our customer portal. Sending invoices the traditional way throughout Europe led to a delay of an average 5 days. We definitely knew that we could optimize this process, so that our customers would have all the relevant information simultaneously at one online location”.

Anachron was delighted to be chosen to develop the e-Invoicing portal. Anachron is known for their cutting edge functionalities and fast implementation periods. The e-Billing application is integrated within the customer portal of Multi Service Europe. Multi Service Europe generates a PDF of the invoice within their business application. Anachron receives the PDF via a secured line. The PDF is then signed with the advanced digital signature so that requirements of the Sixth EU VAT Directive are met.Erik van Os, Project Manager Multi Service Europe continues on the solution: “The e-Invoicing solution results in a direct and indirect cost reduction. We will experience a direct cost reduction because of a decrease in paper usage, printing and handling. Indirectly we will experience faster customer payments as our customers have immediate and direct access to their invoices and related information. This also enables our customers to invoice their customers even faster. The extra benefits for our customers are the easy access to information as they can view invoices from any location and have an online archive for the complete legal period”.

The e-Invoicing application includes a management console that is especially developed for Multi Service Europe to monitor all web actions of the customers. Authorized employees can access the online archive and create and manage user accounts for the e-Invoicing application.

Rutger Gassner concludes: “The e-Invoicing solution is an important step for Multi Service Europe as we can present our invoices immediately throughout Europe. We chose to work with Anachron as our service provider because of the extended experience with e-Invoicing in Europe. Our e-Invoicing solution complies with the EU regulations and is available in multiple languages. By the end of December 2008 all customers can experience the added value of the e-Invoicing platform”.

Characteristics of the solution:

• Online presentation through IFrame
• Signing PDF file with the advanced digital signature
• Sorting functionality
• Notification e-mail
• Multi-lingual & multi-currency
• Online archive for customers and MSE employee
• Management Console

Source: www.anachron.com

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: Anachron solution helps Multi Service Europe to start e-invoicing in Europe.

The importance of the CEN/ISSS Workshop deliverables
The Adobe whitepaper shows once again the importance of the deliverables of the CEN/ISSS Workshop deliverables. At this point the Workshop is in its second phase, having delivered at least one groundbreaking deliverable: the Draft Good Practice Guidelines. These guidelines are available here, here and soon on www.cenfiscalesguidelines.com Some groups with other interests on e-invoicing do not quite agree with these Guidelines. But we arguably can not ignore the fact that this is a serious attempt to remove one of the major barriers on e-invoicing: uncertainty on e-invoicing.

Intelligent PDF: removing barriers?
The intelligent PDF approach presented by Adobe could also serve as a mean to remove a barrier to e-invoicing: adoption in a B2B environment.

E-invoicing is acknowledged to be an unstoppable innovation across and outside Europe. Taking a leap in the future, full scale e-invoicing would mean that the vast majority of organisation is not only sending e-invoices, but also –and this very important– receiving e-invoicing.

One of the results from a major survey conducted by e-business watch showed that most of the companies prefer to receive e-invoices per e-mail in PDF. This is not the answer that some of the BSP would like to hear. But it clearly shows that receivers are in need of control over the inbound e-invoice.

The intelligent PDF approach of Adobe does just that. It combines the humanly interpretable PDF with a for computer systems readable XML format. So now we can receive and read the PDF invoice and having established the perception of control over the e-invoice, we can now extract and import the XML data into our financial software.

This enables e-invoicing between business partners regardless of size, sector, business processes and accounting software. If in fact the intelligent PDF approach guarantees compliance with the respective national VAT legislation, it would also be usable in cross border e-invoicing.

Intelligence in authenticity and integrity?
Interestingly enough, the Adobe intelligent PDF whitepaper mentions the possibility to sign the PDF document. So the PDF document is the format that is being used for formal validation. The invoice’s XML data can be submitted for material validation against external documentation such as supplier contracts. E-invoices archived in PDF/A guarantee the fidelity of the invoice, while the use of XML ensures that invoice data can be transformed to any format required by auditing software.

Maybe it is also interesting to use the XML data for formal validation. This would implicate that not only the PDF document is signed, but also the XML file, for instance with XADES or XMLDSIG. Then, the XML feed can also be used for formal validation even when archived. Additionally it would be very interesting for SME’s to use the PDF document for material validation.

So, the Adobe intelligent PDF is more intelligent compared to the plain old PDF docyument. We can expect it to have an impact on removing the barrier of awareness, including the aspect of adoption by have the perception of being in control. And maybe the approach can be made even more intelligent by incorporating XML signing. This would be very interesting because then it would not matter which document is being used for formal validation: PDF or XML, or both. Creating ease of use (which will be explained in the next Featured Article).

Read the Adobe white paper here:

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: Intelligent PDF: removing barriers?.

Read the entire article here:

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: CEN / Adobe: Intelligent PDF and XML for legally valid electronic invoicing.