The Ocean Freight Industry EIPP Standards Advisory Board (SAB), an independent organization of ocean industry executives from around the world announced new standards guidelines on electronic invoicing.
The new guidelines focus on key handling processes and required data elements for invoice and credit note presentment, in order to help the ocean freight industry enhance e-invoicing efficiency and automation in global shipping.
The newly released guidelines, available on www.eippsab.com, are:
- Invoice Processing: which starts with invoice issuance and ends with invoice acknowledgement, focusing on the exchange of electronic invoices from an invoice issuer to a payer. This supports the automation of invoice acknowledgement, routing, verification, payment and accounting, as well as tax reporting and auditing.
- Credit Note Processing: to simplify the process of issuing and sending electronic credit notes to correct previously-issued invoices or other credits from an ocean carrier to a shipper. This supports the automation of credit note acknowledgement, verification, and accounting, as well as tax reporting and auditing processes.
- EDI messaging guidelines: which provides a standard for both mandatory and optional data elements to be transmitted, as well as a structured format (IFTFCC) for invoice and credit notes to be transmitted between invoice issuers and the payers.
About the Ocean Freight Industry EIPP Standards Advisory Board
This organisation helps companies overcome the complexities of ocean freight invoicing by automating the manual invoice and reconciliation process, helping to reduce disputes, improve customer service and raise overall data quality. With the application of these guidelines, the SAB aims to establish a standard for the ocean shipping industry to improve how electronic messages exchanged between parties should be prepared, transmitted and received.
Cláudia Wada on