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Do you want to reduce your expenses? e-Invoicing is the solution!

There are about 28 billion invoices issued in Europe each year. About half of them in B2B market segment. Using e-Invoicing makes it possible to cut costs even by 70%. Why not use this solution?

e-Invoicing stands for electronic invoicing and implies electronic transfer of invoicing information (billing and payment) between business partners (i.e. seller and buyer).

e-Invoicing is an essential part of an efficient financial supply chain and it links the internal processes of enterprises to the payment systems. According to estimations of the European Commission, European e-invoicing initiative can bring savings of around EUR 64.5 billion per year for businesses.

Since 1 January 2004 there has been a legal obligation for undertakings operating in the European Union to accept electronic invoices. However, experience shows that not all companies make the use of this possibility.

Until now the situation is as follows: the e-Invoicing system is used mainly by larger companies while the small and medium-sized ones have to learn and to follow this approach.

This system offers a huge cost saving potential. It is estimated (Deutsche Post) that a traditional invoice causes costs amounting to EUR 0.70-4.00 for an issuer (costs of billing system, printing, enveloping and transportation) and EUR 2.00-3.00 for a receiver (scanning, manual finishing and ERP system). But cost savings are not the only advantage of the e-Invoicing system. Such issues as quality improvement, prompt posting, increased efficiency due to automatic processing and no-paper model are characteristics of the system as well.

As the example of one of the leading pharmaceutical corporation shows, the costs for invoice exchange between business partners can be reduced even by 70% using e-Invoicing. The corporation has set an objective to receive 63% invoices in electronic form – this goal has been almost achieved after just 10 months. One of the advantages is that 99% of e-Invoices received can be posted in the bookkeeping system without having to process them manually.

How does data archiving look like under the e-Invoicing system? e-Invoices are saved in the IXOS archive (the documents are non-changeable, including verify log) and in an electronic archive in accordance with the legal requirements. Paper invoices are scanned and after that kept sorted by their scanning date in a high rack archive.

e-Invoicing… Why not use this opportunity and save some money?

Magdalena Szarafin

http://www.szarafin.info

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