e-invoicing

It's some time since I heard anyone claim that a pdf invoice was an electronic invoice - but people used to. Fundamentally missing the point of "e-anything" it seemed, some organisations would claim to be embracing the 21st century by replacing paper with pdfs. Fantastic! Well it would be if they didn't print the soft copies in order to process them. This is not a joke. Even today, in 2011, I know of a bank - a global bank - that does just this. It's pathetic!

Readsoft and OB10 have announced a new global partnerships - aimed it seems at delivering the synergy that the two organisation can deliver around e-invoicing and AP automation. The press release states that the two companies have developed a "comprehensive, end-to-end business process solution that will integrate seamlessly with SAP, Oracle and other leading financial and ERP systems using the ReadSoft INVOICE COCKPIT Suite as a universal invoice hub to control all invoice processing irrespective of document format."

There's been a good debate on linkedin over the past few days full of insightful and educated opinions on every side of the e-invoicing discussion. It was started by Christian Lanng from Tradeshift asking what free really means but it spawned into a wide debate about e-invoicing generally and the relative merits of PDF, EDI, XML and of course, scanning which some of the the purists believe, is not the answer to the "e-invoicing problem" because it requires manual intervention.

Research published earlier this year by Basware indicates that costs of e-invoicing to suppliers is one of the dominant reasons for poor adoption of electronic invoicing. A huge 46% of respondents to Basware’s survey said a combination of cost to suppliers and supplier reluctance was the biggest challenges to automation. This is hardly surprising, for years the big e-invoicing networks have loaded the implementation and running costs on the suppliers and it is now limiting further growth. It’s time to take another look at the charges for e-invoicing generally and how it is distributed between buyers and suppliers.

I once heard of an investment that was guaranteed to double my money. What wasn’t guaranteed however, was how long it would take to double!

Caveat Emptor

Purchasing Insight logoYou have to be very careful how you interpret claims made by vendors and claims made for the accuracy of a scanning based document management solution process are no exception. If you want to include scanning of invoices as a component of an AP automation program you need to know that you are likely to in excess of 80% 1st time match. But what does 80% accuracy mean?

The purchasing card is a great business tool. It empowers people to make purchases without the need for a complex and often expensive purchasing process. When a low value item costs less than the cost of the purchasing process itself, it makes sense to cut through the purchase to pay red tape. But the purchasing card is beginning to show it age.  It hasn't really kept up with technological change surrounding it. The merchant fees are excessive, in a low interest rate economy the business case makes no sense and as far as reporting goes, purchasing cards have been trumped by electronic invoicing. Is it the end of the road for the purchasing card?

The relaxation in the regulations on electronic invoicing in Europe will allow more organizations to take advantage of the lower business costs and greater control and efficiency that they allow but – as Ernst and Young point out in an insightful piece recently – a relaxation in the rules doesn’t mean than “anything goes”. Indeed, care needs to be taken to ensure that e-invoicing systems, whether managed in-house or out sourced, need to be thoroughly audited to ensure that they comply with the regulations.