e-invoicing

There are two types of people. Those who get twitter and those who don't. It's genetic. You may or may not get why it’s important to purchasing professionals but whether you are a social networker or not there are some extremely valuable lessons to be learned from the twittersphere and one lesson in particular that some of you are not going to like.

Purchasing Insight logoWe all know that manual processes are inefficient. We all know that the use of paper based business processes is increasingly becoming an anachronism in the 21st century and we all know that AP automation is a good idea. But have you ever stopped to consider how much money is being wasted by not taking action?

When is an e-invoice not an e-invoice? 10 years ago it was simple. It was clear that a "true" or "pure" electronic invoice was a structured computer-to-computer message. The supplier's computer would send an invoice message in a format that the customer's computer could read. An email with a Word document or an excel file attached was not an electronic invoice and worse, a pdf image of a paper invoice was nowhere near an e-invoice. These were superficial attempts to tick the e-invoicing box. They weren't true electronic invoices. But in recent years the line between what is and what is not an e-invoice has become blurred and the "purity" of the "true" electronic invoice is becoming it's own worst enemy.

We're delighted to welcome Lars Kjærsgaard as one of our first guest bloggers. Lars is an International Sales Manager & Account Manager at EDB Consulting Group in Denmark and has some great insights into successfully moving toward 100% electronic invoicing. In my mind there exist at least 5 methods/ways to either automate or semi-automate invoice entry: