Automating accounts payable through e-invoicing

More and more, business leaders and procurement executives are seeing the benefits that automating accounts payable can bestow upon their businesses, both in terms of realizing significant savings and strengthening relationships with their suppliers. Growing demand for automation solutions inevitably leads to an increase in “solution providers”, but when you dig deeper it becomes clear that many solution providers use identical language to describe very different products: e-invoicing, straight-through processing, mobile AP, exception handling, ERP integration, automated workflow, intelligent capture with OCR… The list goes on.

Let’s take electronic invoicing, or “e-invoicing” as an example (at Tungsten Network, it’s our favorite example!)

In the world of AP automation, e-invoicing is about as fundamental a term as you are likely to come across. At Tungsten, we use it (pretty much every minute of) every day. So what is (not) e-invoicing?

• Unstructured data sent in a Word or PDF document, is not an e-invoice.
• A paper invoice sent via a fax machine, is not an e-invoice.
• A paper invoice scanned and sent via email, is not an e-invoice.

Confusing? No, e-invoicing is the exchange of electronic invoice data from a Supplier’s computer to their (Buyer) customer’s computer with no requirement for supporting paper documentation. An e-invoice acts as a VAT, tax and accounting document, as well as the request for payment.

To learn more about e-invoicing, download this informative white paper.