While more governments and businesses use e-Invoicing to improve efficiency, eliminate fraud and benefit from on-time payment, it’s encouraging to see our colleagues in the European Commission taking a strong lead. The recent meeting of the European Multi-Stakeholder Forum (EMSF) on e-Invoicing provided further proof of the EU’s intent to promote its adoption.
Set up by the EU Commission, the forum provides a unique platform to exchange experiences and recommend best practices on the broad-scale adoption of e-Invoicing at both national and EU levels. The forum met in Brussels on 20 March for the first meeting of the forum’s second cycle (the first cycle ran between 2011 and 2013).
An agenda for e-Invoicing adoption
The forum will be mainly focused on implementing e-Invoicing in public procurement and supporting this with essential standards and regulatory measures. Our summary of the main talking points (and indeed action points) show that:
o The public procurement activity group consists of public servants focused on procurement (from countries including France, the Netherlands, Norway, Croatia and Germany) and representatives from service providers, banks and consulting firms, including PricewaterhouseCoopers.
This initial session was fruitful and I’m confident that we will give e-Invoicing in public procurement the push it deserves. The EU Commission is also establishing a separate stakeholder forum to focus on public procurement (mainly pre-award, but with an eye to post-award). This forum will run parallel to the e-Invoicing Forum and both forums will be cross-represented in each other’s sessions
o One of the regulation group’s key issues is the potential elimination of country-specific invoice data fields that impede EU-wide harmonisation and which may be impacted by regulations outside of the e-Invoicing domain
o The standards group discussed a number of new deliverables, in addition to monitoring and contributing to CEN’s work on the core standard, with the aim to use what currently exists rather than reinvent the wheel
This productive meeting highlighted how corporates and governments continue to embrace the inevitable: paper is dead, efficiency is key and e-Invoicing is the future. EU resources and resolve, and public sector directives will go a long way to making the future arrive sooner.
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