What is true e-invoicing?

Electronic invoicing, or e-invoicing, is the exchange of invoice documents between a company that supplies service to their client organizations (often referred to as “trading partners”). In an effort to reduce time, effort and errors associated with manual processing, companies are turning to the electronic exchange of data to support invoicing reducing costs, increasing efficiency of staff and to increase speed of payments.

True e-invoicing involves the seamless exchange of data in structured formats (e.g., EDI, XML) understood between accounting systems versus submission of scanned PDF or Word documents delivered via email that must still be handled in a similar fashion as a paper invoice.

The key challenge faced by trading partners is when they use different systems and invoicing software that cannot “talk” to one another. In an effort to achieve the efficiency of e-invoicing, companies that have invested heavily into accounting systems are seeking supplier compliance with their invoicing standards.

This creates several dilemmas for suppliers:

• Comply or face the risk of losing business to companies that will comply.
• Invest in costly custom software development to integrate their invoicing software with some or all of the invoicing hubs used by their clients, thereby hurting their bottom line.
• Install the same accounting systems the majority of their customers use. This is costly, and this approach will still require workarounds or manual processes to submit invoices to clients on different systems.
• Use logins into separate applications provided by invoicing hubs to submit an invoice which increases administrative costs and reduce efficiency. This is not much of an issue for companies producing low volumes of invoices but it is an issue for companies that conduct substantial business.

ProcureDox has created software that integrates a suppliers accounting system with their clients invoicing hub via a low-cost install and competitive ongoing rates reducing short term and long term fees to automate invoicing.

If you need support to streamline or automate invoicing processes with your clients, contact us to learn more about the ProcureDox solution.