First public and private PEPPOL nodes up and running in Italy
Intercent-ER, the regional agency for the electronic markets development of Italy’s region Emilia-Romagna, and Gruppo Tesi, a leading Italian service provider and system integrator, have completed their efforts to establish the first two Access Points (APs) and Service Metadata Publishers (SMPs) in Italy, promoting their adoption during the production pilot phase.
“I am pleased to see the establishment of both a public and a private PEPPOL node in Italy. This opens the way for both cross community eProcurement and cross border exchange of PEPPOL defined business documents, and marks an important step forward for PEPPOL in Southern Europe”, says PEPPOL’s Project Director André Hoddevik. Both public Contracting Authorities (CAs) and private Economic Operators (EOs) can now access the PEPPOL infrastructure with the support of an Italian partner.
Also the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) – coordinator of the Italian participation in PEPPOL – has expressed appreciation for this major achievement, which fully matches with its efforts for the rationalisation of public expenditures.
For Intercent-ER (http://www.intercent.it) the first production use of the AP/SMP will be to support Intercent-ER’s ongoing post-award pilots, involving many CAs, particularly those belonging to the regional healthcare service. To further boost the use of the infrastructure and the adoption of PEPPOL BIS profiles, the AP/SMP will initially be available to all Italian public entities intending to participate in the current production pilot phase of the project.
Anna Fiorenza, General Manager at Intercent-ER, has been a strong supporter of PEPPOL from the beginning, and “the agency has been working hard to guarantee a rapid growth of the adoption rate of what we see as the best way to create a bigger – European – market, both for Contracting Authorities and Economic Operators, especially SMEs, in Emilia-Romagna.” Intercent-ER’s AP/SMP has been set up within a partnership with Epoca (http://www.epocaricerca.it), an open source project of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia that has implemented a fully functional open source suite capable of connecting to a PEPPOL Access Point and managing PEPPOL BIS invoices.
Gruppo TESI (http://www.gruppotesi.com/en/soluzioni) is a leading Italian service provider and system integrator servicing a broad range of companies across the supply chain with specific solutions in addition to their on-demand and outsourcing services. In 2009, Gruppo TESI promptly answered the call for participation issued by PEPPOL, where service providers were invited to implement the BUSDOX infrastructure and PEPPOL business profiles. Today TESI confirms its commitment in PEPPOL by announcing that their Access Point and Service Metadata Publisher are online and ready for conducting production-oriented pilots.
TESI’s AP supports both the LIME and START protocols from the BUSDOX infrastructure as well as any document syntax (for example UBL) and the complete range of PEPPOL business profiles. Moreover, TESI is preparing the integration with their B2B/EDI platform (e-Integration) to extend PEPPOL usage to potentially all of their customers and peers.
Successful tests
The initial interoperability test has been successfully executed with the Intercent-ER AP as well as other European APs like Sweden’s ESV (http://www.esv.se) and Denmark’s Electronic Business Pages (http://eb-pages.eu/ap). Gruppo TESI’s AP/SMP has been realised in partnership with JAVEST (http://www.javest.com), an Italian middleware provider specialising in electronic business and promotion of open standards in the Italian marketplace.
Source: PEPPOL (Pan-European Public Procurement Online).
Government roadmap for e-Invoicing in Italy
Waiting for the Italian government to establish standards to be adopted to accelerate the commercial relations between enterprises and Public Administrations, a conference in Bari will shed light on the benefits of this new practice already in use in some EU countries. A study of 50 companies in the region of Puglia demonstrates how e-business is the only possible future for the crisis of the current market.
The panel of experts includes a representative of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, who will for the the first time discuss the upcoming standards for the required adoption of e-invoicing.
New e-Invoicing Directive
On 23 June 2010, the Council of the European Union approved a new Directive, amending the 2006/112/EC Directive on the common system of value added tax in regard to the rules on invoicing.
While the original proposal of the European Commission – resulting from an extensive public consultation among businesses and of a study on technological developments – has not been fully realised, there are fundamental principles that legislators have embraced in their approval of the final text of the new Directive. The work of the EC Expert Group on e-Invoicing also contributed to speed up the legal changes which represent one of the main barriers to wider e-Invoicing adoption.
The key principles which form the foundation of the new legal framework are:
- Equality of treatment between paper and electronic invoices
- Use of business controls to guarantee the authenticity, integrity and legibility of an invoice
- Technology neutrality
Equal treatment should also apply in regard to the competences of tax authorities. The control competences and the rights and obligations of taxable persons should apply equally whether a taxable person chooses to issue paper invoices or electronic invoices.
In particular, according to the new Directive:
- “Electronic invoice” means an invoice that contains the information required in the Directive, and which has been issued and received in any electronic format. The use of an electronic invoice shall be subject to acceptance by the recipient
- The authenticity of the origin, the integrity of the content and the legibility of an invoice, whether in paper or in electronic form, shall be ensured from the point in time of issue until the end of the period for storage of the invoice. This may be achieved by any business controls which create a reliable audit trail between an invoice and a supply of goods or services
- Taxable persons should not be required to use any particular electronic-invoicing technology
Technology indeed should not be imposed as a “forced control” on a process. Supporting documents, controls on accounting systems and data entries/records, including the data matching process and an audit trail, are the key elements to ensure a satisfactory level of business controls to tax authorities.
Enterprises will be free to choose the most suitable technology for their specific needs and will have to meet the requirements for authenticity, integrity and legibility using business controls to guarantee the validity of the transactions, as it currently takes place for paper invoices.
Member States shall implement the Directive at national level by 31 December 2012 and apply the provisions from 1 January 2013.
Download the E-Invoicing Directive
Guida Europea alla Fatturazione Elettronica per le PMI
L’European e-Business Lab ha pubblicato la versione in lingua italiana della European e-Invoicing Guide for SMEs, grazie al contributo del Consorzio CBI, in qualità di founding sponsor.
La Guida Europea alla Fatturazione Elettronica per le PMI, realizzata dall’European e-Business Lab su indicazione dell’Expert Group on e-invoicing della Commissione Europea, raccoglie informazioni di carattere commerciale, tecnico, pratico, legale e di compliance in modo che tutte le PMI interessate possano approfondire le proprie conoscenze necessarie a compiere le proprie decisioni in maniera indipendente individuando la soluzione più adatta al proprio business.
La Guida si compone di cinque parti.
La Parte Prima costituisce un’introduzione alla fatturazione elettronica e ad i suoi impatti sul mondo delle imprese, dei processi e della tecnologia fornendo un quadro sinottico dei diversi livelli di automazione ed integrazione (da un livello manuale e semi-automatico fino ad una soluzione end-to-end del tutto automatizzata).
La Parte Seconda svolge il ruolo di guida pratica su come avviare un progetto di fatturazione elettronica, con specifica trattazione delle firme digitali e connesse tecnologie emergenti.
La Parte Terza espone nei dettagli le Best Practices messe insieme a livello europeo ed internazionale da esperti di Fatturazione elettronica per fornire il massimo livello possibile di supporto alle PMI nella fase di formazione/informazione.
La Parte Quarta analizza i requisiti legislativi per la compliance con la Fatturazione elettronica nell’Unione Europea ed in diversi Stati membri offrendo una spiegazione pratica dei requisiti essenziali al raggiungimento della suddetta compliance attraverso l’utilizzo delle diverse opzioni disponibili.
La stessa parte descrive, inoltre, le proposte della Commissione Europea volte ad armonizzare e semplificare l’attuale quadro normativo in tema di Fatturazione Elettronica ed i benefici che queste potrebbero apportare alle imprese.
La Parte Quinta si focalizza sugli standard di dati della fattura, messaggi e tecnologie di trasporto.
Il Consorzio CBI ha provveduto alla traduzione della Guida in lingua italiana.
La Guida può essere scaricata dal seguente link:
Guida Europea alla Fatturazione Elettronica per le PMI
Results of the EC consultation on electronic invoicing
The European Commission published a summary of responses received to the public consultation on the Final Report of the Expert Group on Electronic Invoicing.
The expert group issued recommendations aiming at the creation of an EU framework for electronic invoicing in Europe. The recommendations focus on the definition of essential business requirements, the necessary legal framework, standards to ensure interoperability between existing schemes and a coordinated approach for implementation and communication. The feedback statement summarises a wide range of views from 87 stakeholders.
The summary and the contributions authorised for publication and the final report of the expert group are available at:
http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/payments/einvoicing/index_en.htm
Deutsche Bank launches eSupplyChainHub to support e-invoicing roaming in Europe
Deutsche Bank announced the launch of eSupplyChainHub, a new clearing house facility for electronic invoice processing in Europe.
This new platform, which forms part of the Bank’s db financial supply chain solutions, offers any Electronic Invoice Presentment and Payment (EIPP) providers a fast and efficient file transfer service that enables them to reach all other roaming partners via a unique and secure interface. With eSupplyChainHub, Deutsche Bank will essentially act as a consolidator for EIPP providers and facilitate the roaming of e-invoices across all their networks. The service will initially go live in Germany, but has been designed for an international roll-out.
Source: Deutsche Bank
Electronic invoicing and payments: Roadmap for the Region of Puglia
The Lab completed an extensive study that shed light on the potential benefits of invoicing and payment automation, presenting a roadmap for the Region of Puglia which identified the advantages of such developments starting from a single company, to its supply chain and, finally, to the whole regional economy.
EBL developed an Impact Assessment Model which goes beyond the analysis of the process automation and takes into account the impact of those initiatives on the companyʼs working capital and its liquidity, a critical factor in the current market conditions. The Roadmap for Impact Assessment starts from a basic model of savings from adopting e-invoicing and payments. This is applied in a greater context of the entire financial supply chain, client to cash cycle and the cash conversion cycle with increasing benefits defined within each larger context. Going outside the specific definition of a company, the model explores how adoption impacts opportunities among supplier groups, the vertical industry supply chain, dynamic networks and, finally, the economy of Puglia, overall.
The data used for the study has been gathered through direct interviews, online surveys and case studies carried out with companies located in the Region of Puglia, in the first quarter 2010. Benefits are estimated at 3.5 billion euro, i.e. 4.9% GDP of the Region. The results show that for invoice automation, 36% of the savings derive from outbound invoices, while 64% from automating the receipt side of the invoicing process.
In particular, annual savings from complete automation of the invoicing process are estimated at 709 million euro, while the potential benefits derived from the use of online payments are of 932 million euro. Moreover, when automating the invoice-to-payment process there would be a dramatic reduction of errors and non-conformities which would result in an estimated 948 million euro in savings. In terms of working capital and liquidity, sending e-invoices daily, or in real time, would unlock 666 million euro, yearly.
The results of the study were discussed with local business leaders during an EBL conference, held in Bari, and hosted by Confindustria, on March 15, 2010. Experts of the European Commission, the Italian Tax Agency and the Italian Banking Association attended as speakers.
How Electronic Invoicing helps to reduce the risk of fraud
As in the paper invoice environment, the real risk in the electronic invoicing process is not in the delivery of the data but in the matching, processing and payment of the invoices in the receiver’s system. A company can be a victim of fraudulent behaviour only if it does not have the appropriate controls in place.
Security measures at the data transport level do not protect from fraudulent behaviours. If, for example, a company (or fraudster within that company) issues an e-invoice for products that have never been produced or with different bank account details, the security transport mechanism (for example an advanced electronic signature) will have absolutely no power to protect the receiver. Only the receiver’s internal controls and procedures will protect the receiver company. Read more
Half of UK businesses still on manual invoicing
Almost half of the UK’s businesses still use entirely manual invoice processing systems, according to a recent survey.
Data management company Formscan says that 48% of companies it surveyed are still inputting and processing invoices manually, though half have automated their accounts receivable processes. According to Formscan, those without an automated accounts receivable and accounts payable system may be missing out on cost savings of up to 80% on the cost of invoice processing.
The most striking aspect of the survey is the emergence of mid-market companies as leaders in the automation of invoicing systems. Companies with 250 to 1,000 employees are ahead of larger companies in accounts payable and accounts receivable automation, the survey suggests. This could be because the mid-market will often comprise businesses that are under considerable pressure from larger, weightier competitors and which therefore urgently need to streamline costs, but are small enough to implement such changes without massive overheads or business interruption.
That said, it is not essential to implement a system to automate these processes from end to end, as savings can be found from introducing elements of automation to a manual process.
“There is no need to implement total e-invoicing – hybrid systems can introduce high levels of automation into AP/AR which deliver substantial cost savings and far greater transparency of financial reporting,” says Formscan MD Chris Haden. “With 90% of invoicing still performed through paper documents, hybrid solutions are also needed to manage the transition from paper to electronic documents over the coming decades.”
Source: Personal Computer World.
New guide aims to promote e-Invoicing uptake in SMEs
The European e-Business Lab (EBL), a cross-industry initiative to share and improve e-business best practices, recently published a guide on electronic invoicing for SMEs that is sponsored among others by UEAPME and its Austrian member WKÖ.
The potential savings from the adoption of e-invoicing are estimated at 238 billion EUR, with figures suggesting that companies could reduce costs by up to 80%. However, paper invoices remain the norm in SMEs, mainly due to the lack of unbiased information and on the need for SME owners to rely on third party suppliers. The guide aims therefore to provide practical guidance and information on the business, technical, practical, legal and compliance aspects of e-invoicing.
According to UEAPME, this guide has the potential to promote the uptake of e-invoicing in SMEs, which must also be supported by a single, EU-wide legal framework amending and simplifying the current rules, as proposed by the EC.
Source: UEAPME
