How eInvoicing helps reduce process errors

eInvoicing, the electronic exchange of invoices as opposed to a paper-based system, is expected to become ever more essential.

Up to now, market development in the use of eInvoicing has largely been driven by trading companies themselves, for reasons of efficiency.

More recently, governments in different parts of the world have championed eInvoicing for tax compliance and other regulatory reasons. Indeed, submitting invoice information in electronic formats is expected to dominate as a basic requirement of cross-border trade with some countries in the EU and globally, already mandating eInvoicing and Real-Time Reporting of tax data.

The result is that businesses are increasingly being required to switch to eInvoicing under ‘real-time clearance models’ for invoice processing. In so doing, they are better placed to achieve both commercial efficiency and compliance with government requirements.

At the same time, suppliers will increasingly struggle to be paid quickly and without fuss, unless they accept and act on the greater efficiencies that eInvoicing can bring.

Despite the growing take-up of EDI, or electronic data interchange, some trading partners have insisted on keeping email attachments and PDFs as their preferred way of communicating order and invoice information. To accommodate this, you will have to manually process their documents and duplicate the information into your back-office systems.

The downsides are obvious: unnecessary time having to be spent, avoidable cost on the bottom line, and the risk of human error leading to mistakes that have to be rectified later on.

Instead, eInvoice enables you to reduce costs while enhancing productivity.

A key aspect is the avoidance of invoice errors that tend to creep in during time-consuming manual handling characterised by repetitive, rule-based work.

Human error is often the main culprit, especially when hard-pressed teams are seeking to process high volumes of invoices coming in from multiple trading partners.

Formats may include post and email, with the relevant data needing to be manually keyed into your accounts system.

As a prime example of Paper-to-Digital eInvoicing, the cloud-based eInvoice solution automatically extracts the required data no matter the format.

The benefits are many. By cutting the risk of human error, you reduce the time and budget it takes to process invoices. You also minimise the number of unvalidated or rejected invoices and the potential for disputes that need to be settled further down the line. The upshot is a better cash flow position for your business.

A recent report by credit insurance specialist Atradius found that two-thirds of UK suppliers had achieved faster payments after the adoption of eInvoicing. By minimising the costs of managing their supply or distribution networks, they had kept their cashflows healthier.

Our ‘bundle based’ business model provides a complete solution without any additional VAN, or value-added network, charges. In other words, no fee per transaction meaning you can apply eInvoice to however many trading partners you have at no extra cost.

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