The definitive transition from paper administration to digital invoicing is inevitable in this era. We also know that at Smartbooqing. In a world where everything has to be easier and faster, the billions of paper invoices sent each year are already an expensive and time-consuming business. With invoices in PDF, a good start is being made towards ‘unzipping’, but it is not yet electronic invoicing. And that printer will remain on in the meantime.
Real electronic invoicing
Wait a minute, isn’t a PDF an e-invoice? Good note, but unfortunately, a PDF is a digital representation of the information. The recipient can do anything with it: print it out, have it read by the accounting program or have it scanned & recognized. But at the end of the story there is still own interpretation and control. E (electronic) invoicing is a legally accepted way of sending and automatically processing an invoice, entirely digitally. Without a printer.
The major time saving lies in the basic data, which, unlike a PDF or paper invoice, no longer have to be searched for. With an electronic invoice there is 100% recognition, because all values on the invoice are named and recorded. The most common format for such a document is UBL 2.0. And that invoicing 2.0 is on the rise now that the UBL government is going to use it as a standard as of 1 January. SmartBooqing already does this after a successful UBL chain test.
Peppol
In the Netherlands, we are ready for the future, but is the rest of Europe too? After all, there must be free movement for these UBLs. It is true, in cooperation with 17 industries, that the European Commission has been working on a standard system in recent years. Due to mostly technical and legal obstacles and its own systems, e-invoicing, in particular, remains at national and regional level. If, for example, a Danish telescope maker wants to do business with a French hospital, this is a disincentive.
Yes, and that goes against the European idea. This is how the Pan Europe Procurement Online, fortunately abbreviated to Peppol (video), was created. The goal is simple. By creating a standard platform where the entire tendering and invoicing process is equalized at the European level, transparency is created, the working process is much shorter, costs are reduced and more space is created. The printer can also be removed. It is therefore not surprising that Smartbooqing, with the designation UBL ready, makes use of the Peppol network.