Estonia boosts e-invoicing by starting with government

The Estonian Ministry of Finance along with Estonian Post’s subsiduary service - the Estonian eInvoicing Centre (www.arvekeskus.ee), will sign a service agreement this week, offering the e-invoicing service environment to government agencies to help reduce administrative costs. The signed service contract will be valid until 2013.

The first government agencies in Estonia to handle e-invoices are Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Justice. Transition to e-invoicing is part of the Information Society Action Plan and the Ministry of Finance is setting up the transition process as part of its accounting centralization project which started in 2010. The system is expected to be fully implemented by 1st March 2011.

The service will standardise invoicing procedures and see the rapid shift to e-invoicing for all state agencies. It will also reduce the workload of accountants, as after checking the electronic data; it will be automatically be transferred to accounting software.

“We believe that we offer the best technological solution in Estonia to the state for processing e-invoices. Since creation of Estonian eInvoicing Centre the number of users in both the public and business sectors have steadily increased. Last year the number of users increased almost seven times which demonstrates a wider appreciation of the added value of the service,” said Chairman of the Board of Estonian Post Ahti Kallaste.

Estonian Post said the move to e-invoicing by Estonian state agencies would over time, eliminate paper invoices altogether and the format could also be sent via other means such as email.

See more information also: http://www.post.ee/newsolutions

Source: Hellmail