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.
UN/CEFACT Stakeholder Survey
This survey forms part of the UN/CEFACT eBGT Gap analysis projects.
For several years the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (CEFACT) has been developing a set of electronic standards for international trade data. Progress has been slower than had been hoped for, and CEFACT is currently reassessing stakeholder needs and priorities to ensure that its work is addressing the most urgent requirements.
CEFACT has formed three project teams to report quickly on:
- The current needs of stakeholders for open international standards for electronic international trade data messages; and which standards stakeholders would like CEFACT to deliver as priorities; “stakeholders” answering questions are likely to be those who are users or implementers of message standards;
- An assessment of the knowledge that stakeholders have in the CEFACT Core Component Library (CCL), which contains the data elements needed to complete messages, and the usability or otherwise of the CCL; “stakeholders” are likely to be organisations involved in developing standards for their own industry/region and implementers of message standards;
- The technical specifications that underpin message assembly and assure messages can be interpreted by different systems; “stakeholders” are likely to be the organisations involved in developing technology infrastructure standards, technology users and implementers of message standards.
CEFACT is consulting those already involved in CEFACT’s work as well as a selection of stakeholders that are not, in order to submit a report to CEFACT by the end of February 2010.
The project teams would like your urgent responses to a set of questions that address these issues, by 23 January 2010 at the latest. You are asked to complete only those that are of interest or relevance to your organisation.
The survey is available at:
http://ebgtgapanalysis.limequery.org/index.php?sid=78745&lang=en
Source: UN/CEFACT
Putting the power back into the hands of SMEs
The European e-Business Lab (EBL) announced today the publication of the e-Invoicing Guide for SMEs as its first contribution to foster adoption of e-Business across the region.
For the past twenty years, large corporations have been automating their invoicing processes, in order to take advantage of the savings and efficiencies that e-Invoicing can provide. Since 2005, European governments (i.e. in Denmark, Spain, Italy, Sweden, etc.) have started to make e-Invoicing mandatory for the public sector.
The benefits that Europe could derive from e-Invoicing adoption are estimated at € 238 billion and the European Associations of Corporate Treasurers has reached similar results, estimating that companies could save up to 80% of their current costs by processing invoice data automatically.
Nevertheless, today the majority of small and medium enterprises in Europe are still creating paper invoices, putting them into envelopes with stamps, and either sending them through the postal system or by courier to their clients, leaving mass adoption of e-Invoicing a distant dream.
“We developed the Guide in response to national and regional surveys in collaboration with the European SME associations. The intent is to provide SMEs with unbiased information and insight regarding the different aspects of e-Invoicing and practical guidance on how to begin. The Guide combines business, technical, practical, legal and compliance information in a way that interested SMEs can be armed with knowledge when making their own independent decisions to chart the best way forward for their business.” Carmen Ciciriello, Founder of EBL.
The Guide is not meant to be a step by step, “Technical Guide”, nor does it provide specific information on the universe of solutions and services on offer. Instead, it offers management insight into the impact of e-Invoicing, addressing key issues and providing best practices for implementation.
By avoiding an all or nothing approach, the guide may be just what is needed to spur e-Invoicing adoption. The authors, Carmen Ciciriello and Mairi Hayworth, provide clear process flowcharts taking the reader from manual processing through interim steps towards a completely automated business platform.
The Guide is sponsored by SEPA International, UAPME (the European Association of Craft, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises), AustriaPro, CBI Consortium and WKO (Austrian Federal Economic Chamber). It will be available in English, Italian and German.
To download the Guide, please click on the following link:
UN/CEFACT approves Cross Industry Invoice (CII) Version 2.0
The United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) has approved the Cross Industry Invoice (CII) Version 2.0 standard to enhance links between the business and financial supply chains and enable cross-industry and cross-domain interoperability. This common global standard is based on a set of business requirements from different industries and stakeholders in both the private and public sectors.
The CII, which is an electronic document exchanged globally between trading partners with a prime function as a request for payment, is an important accounting document and has potential legal implications for sender and receiver. It is also typically used as the key document for Value Added Tax (VAT) declaration and reclamation, for statistics declarations, and to support export and import declarations in respect of international trade.
The CII addresses the strong business need for large scale implementation of eInvoicing, in particular, offering valuable assistance for business and governments in exchanging structured data. It has international application and also supports the requirements of the European Commission Expert Group on eInvoicing. It will be complemented by a series of additional UN/CEFACT standards covering core supply chain processes including Quotation, Scheduling, Catalogue, Ordering and Despatch Advice.
The release of the second generation of the Cross Industry Invoice, together with ongoing work within the UN/CEFACT Forum, was welcomed by the CEN/ISSS Workshop/BII (European Committee for Standardization Information Society Standardization System Workshop on Business Interoperability Interfaces on public procurement in Europe) as it allows them to move forward with their work on Implementation Verification of key business documents for use in procurement within Europe.
The above work was finalized on September 30th at the UN/CEFACT Forum in Sapporo Japan, attended by over 200 experts from over 30 countries.
The CII Schema is available from the UNECE website at:
http://www.unece.org/uncefact/data/standard/CrossIndustryInvoice_1p0.xsd
Source: UN/CEFACT
