Ocean Freight Industry launches e-invoicing standards guidelines

The new guidelines focus on handling processes and required data elements for invoice and credit note presentment, in order to help the Ocean Freight Industry enhance e-invoicing and automation in global shipping.

The newly released guidelines include among others invoice processing, which starts with invoice issuance and ends with invoice acknowledgement, focusing on the exchange of electronic invoices from an invoice issuer to a payer. This supports the automation of invoice acknowledgement, routing, verification, payment and accounting, as well as tax reporting and auditing.

The guidelines also include credit note processing to enhance the process of issuing and sending electronic credit notes to correct previously-issued invoices or other credits from an ocean carrier to a shipper. This supports the automation of credit note acknowledgement, verification, and accounting, as well as tax reporting and auditing processes.

Last but not least, it also includes EDI messaging guidelines, which provide a standard for both mandatory and optional data elements to be transmitted, as well as a structured format (IFTFCC) for invoice and credit notes to be transmitted between invoice issuers and the payers.