The new system should result in a sharp drop in the administrative burden both for the government and for businesses. It should also provide a powerful tool in monitoring and reducing payment terms.

With e-invoicing the Flemish government wants to achieve an efficiency gain of € 7.6 million on a total of 700,000 invoices per year. The implementation of the system goes through various phases. Around January 1, 2014 a digital billing platform is erected to make it possible to receive invoices. As from 1 January 2015, companies have the opportunity to send digital invoices to all entities of the Flemish government. By 2017, all invoices are to be received and processed digitally.

E-tendering

Earlier, the Flemish government’s introduced a system of digital tenders in public procurement. This not only ensured greater transparency and accessibility for business, the Flemish government itself realized major efficiency gains. In 2012 already 89.9% of the tenders were submitted digitally.

Direct link

The next step is the digitization of the billing process. To ensure that companies are faced with a uniform system, the e-invoicing platform takes into account the European standards. Companies can make a direct link between their own financial system and the platform (useful for companies with many invoices), use an intermediate private service or pas their billing information through a simple web application. This creates a fully automated electronic exchange of billing information between the companies and the Flemish government.