Some people say that the world needs best practices on e-invoicing to increase the adoption of e-invoicing. It just happens that this website is loaded with best practices. And this we’re going to add another.

FRAM, a major French organisation for integrated tourism and a pioneer in the travel industry since 1949, talks about its project for tax-compliant electronic invoicing, carried out with the support of ACCELYA.

About Fram

FRAM, via its Voyages FRAM entity, is France’s third largest tour operator, and having recently celebrated its 60th anniversary, it is also a true pioneer in the industry.

With its headquarters in Toulouse, over 4,000 employees, and revenue of €370 million, FRAM organises holidays for around 500,000 customers each year. FRAM’s distribution network is made up of 60 agencies.

The project: tax-compliant e-invoicing

1. The project involves a current volume of 300,000 customer invoices, and several stages have already been successfully implemented in response to the needs of travel agencies and customers, in a move towards 100% integration of invoicing data.
2. Paper invoices had previously been sent out with the other travel documents, and so the decision to make the latter electronic necessarily implied that invoices also had to be made electronic.
3. The first step was to move over to paperless processing for all invoices sent out to the agencies within the FRAM network. It was during the implementation of this phase that the decision was made to extend paperless processing to other invoices too, in particular those sent to joint charter companies and partner tour operators.
   
4. To optimise the level of automation and integration in the systems, a structured format for tax-compliant e-invoices was selected. This format is specifically designed for agencies and the travel industry, and is compliant with the provisions of article 289bis of the French General Tax Code, which authorizes tax-compliant electronic invoicing, and therefore the possibility to consign paper invoices to history.
5. Over the last few months, the project has stepped up to an entirely new level, with the implementation of Accelya’s “Massive Deployment” solution -a simple and efficient signed PDF option, incorporating the requisite ten-year archiving period- covering invoices sent to all of the tour operator’s customers.This new service is offered to customers as an option, which they may of course opt not to take advantage of, should they prefer, in line with the group’s aims of offering value-added services and matching its offers to its customers’ individual requirements.

The results

With electronic invoices now accounting for 70% of the 300,000 invoices issued for 4,000 agencies, the project has certainly got off to a good start.

• Customers are now able to access their invoices more easily, via the Clear’ Invoice electronic invoicing platform.
• FRAM offers its customers true added value and also contributes to sustainable development.

Quotes

• Jean-Marc Gomis, Information Systems Director for the FRAM group:“We needed a trusted third party with experience in the field and above all a partner that would be able to support us throughout this project. Accelya perfectly understood our needs and constraints, and already had experience in the tourism industry”.
  
  “Through discussions with major IT travel companies and active participation in working groups focusing on XML formats for the travel industry, every effort has been made to ensure that this automation is as straightforward as possible, via the use of pivot formats, and to achieve integration of the entire invoicing process”