How to future-proof international trade with automated invoice capabilities

As the digital age continues to drive both businesses and consumers to online channels, key decision-makers also need to factor in how this impacts operations. Particularly when international markets are involved. Brexit, along with new legislation, has increased bureaucracy in facilitating international trade. To mitigate these obstacles, forward-thinking businesses are investing in the digital transformation of their finance processing. This means implementing more efficient strategies for both the Accounts Receivable (AR) and Accounts Payable (AP) functions.

In this blog, we outline the key legislation changes for international trade and what this means for businesses with supply chains both in and outside of Europe.

Governments across Europe and further afield have been advocates of automated invoice processing (also known as eInvoicing) for many years.

This trend towards electronic invoice processing will grow rapidly over the coming years, especially across Europe. Some of the largest EU economies, such as Germany, France and Spain have all implemented phased plans to mandate the use of eInvoicing in B2G and B2B over the course of 2022-25. However, many other European governments have already enacted eInvoice legislation. For example, the Italian, Hungarian and Austrian Governments have eInvoice tax submission standards. These require businesses to submit digital invoices via local tax authorities.

Below is a summary of key eInvoice mandates in Europe:

Mandates for automated invoice capabilities will to continue to be introduced as Governments believe they can recover the cost of supporting businesses through COVID-19. For example, mandating Real-Time Reporting (RTR) can be used to close the VAT gap, as opposed to taxing the citizen directly.

With change on the horizon or already being implemented, businesses now need to automate their Accounts Payable (AP) and Accounts Receivable (AR) functions. This not only means they can continue international trade unrestricted, but they will also gain from the long-term benefits including:

We worked with a cosmetics client to provide a suitable invoice automation solution, as they found EDI wasn’t sufficient enough to manage their complex order and billing process. Instead, they required a solution that could facilitate on-the-fly review and approval steps.

With the AP Automation solution, businesses will save an average of 60-80% over their existing manual processing of these incoming invoice documents. Use our interactive calculator to discover your forecast annual savings.

In our report, Frictionless Business for the Future, we explore how to reduce the cost of meeting emerging einvoice requirements across Europe. Our AR Automation solution can be customised to suit your eInvoicing requirements. It can accommodate:

This build-your-own approach to automated invoice capabilities for the AR function ensures your business gets the exact functionality and features you require. For example, a basic eInvoice setup for AR with 10 connections is just £3,999 per annum. With the imminent changes to international einvoice legislation in the coming years, forward-thinking organisations will need to start exploring suitable options now.

An emerging area of invoice standardisation is the growing use of PEPPOL to exchange electronic documents.

Standing for Pan-European Public Procurement On-Line, PEPPOL is a network that uses a standardised framework to digitally exchange order data between trading parties.

Previously, PEPPOL has been almost exclusively used to connect with public sector organisations. However, we are increasingly seeing private businesses make use of it. Not unlike EDI, PEPPOL operates using a set of standard message formats that simplify the process of exchanging documents between organisations.

PEPPOL offers an alternative to traditional EDI. Particularly in the case of design and manufacturing businesses involved in capital projects, that have now switched to PEPPOL to exchange messages.

Continuing from our previous example, the client was familiar with PEPPOL standards, so our solution simply needed to manage the transmission of messages. This approach resulted in both a reduction of costs and time. This is because there was no need to use a traditional ‘PEPPOL approved access-point’ for the set-up and configuration.