TrustWeaver to be acquired by Sovos

The announcement comes just weeks after the European Commission granted Italy permission to mandate e-invoicing, making it the first country in the EU to do so. Italy’s move paves the way for rapid expansion of real-time, transaction level reporting in Europe.

The acquisition extends Sovos’ e-invoicing coverage to 60 countries in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific, building on its success in Latin America, where e-invoicing has been used successfully in recent years to close VAT collection gaps. It also adds support for “post-audit” compliance, including e-signatures in compliance with the eIDAS Regulation, an onerous set of standards for electronic trust and identification in Europe.

In recent years, governments on six continents have mandated electronic signature rules, including proof of authenticity and proof of origin, and required invoice archiving for audit purposes, where specific invoice details must be searchable for as many as 10 years. TrustWeaver has led the way in safeguarding businesses from the risks and burdens of these measures, automating compliance with those rules within the most common procure-to-pay (P2P), EDI, business network, ERP and supply chain systems.

As digital tax enforcement spreads around the globe, businesses are faced with complex and fragmented requirements that slow critical financial processes, increase compliance costs and stretch financial systems beyond their capabilities. Until now, no software solution has addressed the whole global e-invoicing compliance market.

Sovos, which announced its global tax automation platform, the Intelligent Compliance Cloud, in 2017, has been actively working to acquire the leading solutions for e-invoicing in every region. TrustWeaver, which has grown quickly as a result of technology-driven tax compliance by offering embedded compliance-as-a-service in more than 60 top financial systems, including SAP, IBM and Coupa, was a natural extension of that strategy, according to John Gledhill, vice president of corporate development for Sovos.