Friday, April 1, 2011

Is e-Invoicing too Hard?

YouGov recently conducted research on e-invoicing adoption and perceptions in the UK and released their findings this week. They found 36% of UK respondents would take up e-invoicing if there was a standard approach to this type of technology.

I have been involved in e-invoicing for many years and I can tell you that e-invoicing is very difficult.  It seems every country has e-invoicing mandates and requirements that change yearly.  In addition, all seem to have penalties for failure to be compliant and require an increasing amount of real-time B2B data exchanges with tax authorities.  Just take a look at all the various dynamic requirements for e-invoicing in Latin America (Mexico, Brazil, Argentina).

As a former EDI Manager, I know my employers would not have been willing to continually expand my  budget to support each countries' increasingly complex e-invoicing environment.  My only remedy, which I would have been very happy to accept, would be to find a global e-invoicing service provider.  As an SAP user I would have looked at the SAP Information Interchange first since this service provider is sold and supported by SAP.

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Kevin R Benedict Independent e-Invoicing/EDI Consultant, Analyst and Blogger
Join the SAP EDI and SAP Information Interchange group on Linkedin:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2884582&trk=anet_ug_grppro

*Full Disclosure: I am an independent consultant that has worked with and for many of the companies mentioned.

1 comment:

  1. I saw a demo from adobe where a manager can approve an invoice outside the system and also put his digital signature.

    www.sapsecuritytrainer.com

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