As a business owner, you want to stay focused on your business and not waste hours on time-consuming administration. If you are a bookkeeper or accountant, you too are aiming for maximum efficiency. Digital invoicing delivers a win-win situation for everyone involved. What are digital invoices? And what is the best way of approaching e-invoicing?
Traditional paper-based invoices take a lot of time to process. You have to send, receive, check and pay them or send reminders to your customers. Like other paper-based processes, this traditional invoicing takes up too much precious time from you or your staff. Moreover, these administrative tasks are open to human error.
The result is wasted hours, higher costs and a negative impact on your business because you have less time to spend on your core activities that add real value.
Having specific software for invoicing tasks is a step in the right direction. Nevertheless, such software frequently struggles to read and interpret different invoice formats. So what's the solution? An electronic or digital invoice means you have a document that contains all the required invoicing information in a fixed location in a digital file. In the case of e-invoicing, therefore, the exchange of invoices between supplier and buyer takes place in an integrated electronic format.
Although e-invoicing is a widespread B2B practice, it is helpful to brush up on the specifics of true digital invoices. Such documents are created, sent and received electronically (read: paperless) – in other words, not via scanned documents.
Sending is done via structured data in UBL format (= Universal Business Language) and securely via Peppol. PDF or Word versions of invoices – including scanned paper documents – are not considered e-invoices.
E-invoicing has some exciting benefits for both senders and recipients. Firstly, it delivers significant efficiency gains and cost savings thanks to simpler invoice management and reduced administrative burden.
Secondly, e-invoicing ensures faster processing and payment. The Flemish government even offers discounts to suppliers who adopt a standardized approach to electronic invoicing. Last but not least, it allows some additional integrations between your office and your trading partners and between your invoicing software and other business systems.
Peppol (Pan-European Public Procurement Online) is a secure network developed with the support of the European Commission. You can use this network to send digital invoices to government departments or other businesses, nationally or internationally. This is simple to do via invoicing software connected to a Peppol Access Point. In this way, your invoices go directly into your recipient’s software.
Furthermore, Peppol’s secure network ensures that your invoices are not lost in transit, and the system also protects you against invoice fraud. Another significant advantage is that you can seamlessly integrate this model with your ERP system, generating additional efficiency and time savings.
Try Billit’s digital invoicing platform free of charge for 15 days and get started right away!
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