Sage announced its Sage eFacture offering, which boasts interoperability with numerous clients in France. The service was developed in partnership with Cegedim, and lets small and mid- sized companies send e-invoices to clients who require specific invoice formats.

All French organizations and companies will need to be able to accept digitized e-invoices from their suppliers according to a timeline set by the French parliament:

• 2017 for large companies and public institutions,
• 2018 for intermediate-sized enterprises (ETIs),
• 2019 for small and mid-sized companies (SMEs),
• and 2020 for very small companies (TPEs: Très petite entreprise).

At present, according to an April 2016* survey, only 28% of companies use e-invoice technologies.

To get SMEs and TPEs ready for these deadlines, and to help them create invoices with the formats required by public institutions and large companies, Sage is endowing its Sage eFacture solution with an interoperability platform developed in partnership with Cegedim, a European leader in invoice digitization.

The platform integrates easily and seamlessly with Sage eFacture, allowing users to convert an invoice into the format required by a particular client when there is no established standard in France or in Europe. The conversion uses an XML format to transfer the invoice data, but the end result for users is a conventional PDF file.

Simplify e-invoicing in order to enjoy all the benefits

For SMEs and TPEs, this interoperability platform will deliver major benefits, notably optimizing cash management. Using the right format for e-invoices cuts down on the risk of returned invoices and thus shortens payment times, which helps the company have a clearer picture of when its clients will make payments.

The Sage eFacture portal gives users a comprehensive view of the state of e-invoices that have been sent to clients, thereby ensuring a material reduction in payment times. Lastly, e-invoices cost significantly less (€0.80 per invoice with Sage eFacture) than traditional invoices, which can cost up to €5 a piece.

Laurent Luce, Product Marketing Manager at Sage:
“The use of e-invoices is going to be more and more common for small and mid-sized companies. This isn’t a burden; it’s an opportunity to boost productivity and improve cash management. Our partnership with the specialists at Cegedim has allowed us to make life even easier for SMEs and TPEs by removing any concern about the format of their e-invoices and giving their clients the assurance that they have robust technical solutions. Today, the key to e- invoicing is not to create a universal format, but to design the broadest possible interoperability, and Sage is one of the few software publishers who does it.”

Patrick Schuller, Sales and Marketing Director at Cegedim:
“TPEs and SMEs are now going to be required to digitize the invoices they send to public institutions. This is going to transform the market, significantly increasing the volume of e-invoices, and given the lack of a universal standard, billing departments will need to be able to convert their invoices into multiple formats. The Sage eFacture platform that we developed jointly with Sage is designed to give clients transparent, stress-free access to invoice digitization via an automated solution requiring zero human input to ensure maximum reliability.”