Australia pushes for adoption of e-invoicing across businesses

Using e-invoicing to connect businesses and enabling them to trade electronically is a modern solution to the paper problem. It’s been estimated that paper consumption per office worker ranges between 10,000 & 20,000 sheets a year, with a higher figure likely for accounting and finance industries. The business and environmental impact of paper invoicing also means its unsustainable and hugely unproductive.

Organisations can save 1-2% of turnover by replacing paper invoices with electronic invoices and optimising their supply chain, so why has the adoption of e-invoicing been so slow in Australia and APAC?

Most importantly, e-invoicing needs to be as simple as possible for the supplier to use, to ensure high adoption. Historically, this has not been the case and as a result, supplier participation has been impacted. However, more recent technical advances have enabled more and more organisations to connect and trade electronically.

Unfortunately, most organisations are not aware of the automation possibilities that present themselves by using the data that lies, literally in front of their eyes (the invoice data is literally carried in the PDF itself – as put there by the application that generated it).

High adoption of the suppliers that matter is one of the most important factors to a successful e-invoicing project. The more electronic invoices you receive, the less paper remains in the business. The quicker you can get your suppliers on-board, the sooner you will realise the benefits.

So, why is there often such a low take-up of e-invoicing particularly with small to medium size suppliers? Well, there are two main barriers to adoption, namely the technical change suppliers often must make and the perceived financial cost to the supplier.

E-invoicing offers significant value, both to suppliers and buyers. For buyers, it decreases costs, as they no longer need to use unreliable and expensive methods to capture supplier invoice information, such as scan and capture or manual data entry into their ERP or AP systems. When implemented correctly, it also, eliminates processing errors and as the exchange is completely electronic, reduces processing time.

For suppliers, e-invoicing helps them to receive payments on time from their customers, reducing cost of invoicing and eliminating processing errors. It also often enhances the opportunity to participate in buyer-led payment advancements and dynamic discounting programs.

The good news is that the Australian Digital Business Council has begun to work with businesses and e-invoicing providers in Australia to introduce standards and guidelines for e-invoicing, with an aim to increase adoption of e-invoicing across Government and businesses.

The Council is specifically encouraging the use of solutions, which lower the entry barriers for e-invoicing and enable rapid realisation of the associated benefits. It is often the case that complex-invoicing approaches require suppliers to comply with set XML or EDI standards, which almost always requires configuration or development work within a supplier’s systems. This is obviously costly and time consuming, leading to business cases that only stack up with suppliers that send out significant volumes of invoices.