A beginner's guide to e-invoicing

INFOGRAPHIC zervant By Zervant E-invoicing A beginner's guide Why the fuss? The EU wants to make electronic invoicing (aka e-invoicing) the dominant form of invoicing in Europe by 2020 And it's not only the EU that's excited about this. Big busi- nesses and governments the world over are very keen to move over to e-invoicing. Why? Because any system that uses paper means additional costs and processing time. Get rid of the paper, get rid of the problems. Not only that, a switch to e-invoicing will also cut admin costs, improve cashflow, and reduce your carbon footprint. E-invoicing is going to be huge, so it's essential to be clued up on this phenomenon. Which, conveniently, is where this infographic comes in! What is e-invoicing ? It's a type of invoicing where everything is provided in a digital format, and paper is completely removed from the process. Your invoices are created, sent, received, processed and archived electronically. And they can be paid at the click of a button. SENDER RECIPIENT All information flows directly The pre-defined format No manual intervention such from supplier to buyer. means invoices can't be as downloading, printing or altered, which guarantees scanning is required. safety and authenticity. So e-invoicing is just like sending a PDF or an email, right? PDF @ WRONG! PDFS, scanned invoices and email attachments are NOT examples of electronic invoicing. These methods are partly automated, but still require human input. Electronic invoicing is 100% automated, machine to machine invoicing. Facts & figures 8% 20% of the world's invoices were sent The current annual growth rate for as e-invoices in 2015 e-invoicing Global leaders in e-invoicing here are different ways of measuring this, including market penetration, the number of e-invoices sent, and the sophistication of the technology used. The Nordics Brazil An international e-invoicing hotspot. 90% market penetration for e-invoicing Finland Chile The most advanced system worldwide, which makes it 50% easy for big business, small business and consumers alike of all invoices are sent as to use e-invoicing. e-invoices E-invoicing in Europe It's most popular in B2B transactions, whilst B2C is not nearly as developed or widespread. B2B B2C .***.. 4.6 billion 2.7 billion Number of B2B e-invoices sent Number of B2C e-invoices sent in Europe in 2015 in Europe in 2015 Benefits It's simple E-invoice A direct, fully automated process with no manual intervention. Sender Recelver Sender 1 2 Paper invoice Step 1- Create the invoice Step 2 - Print and post it (or send via email) Step 3 - Buyer sends it to relevant department 4 Step 4 - Invoice downloaded from email Step 5 - Invoice is reviewed and approved Step 6 - Invoice is paid 7 ---> Step 7 - Invoice is archived Receiver It's quick PAPER INVOICE E-INVOICE 23 days 5 days The time it takes large companies to process The average time needed to process an invoice (if there are any errors, it can be as an e-invoice. long as 90 days). 10.5 minutes 6 minutes The total amount of time a small business The total amount of time a small business spends, on average, with an e-invoice. A saving of over 30%. spends, on average, with each paper invoice. It's accurate and secure As e-invoices are sent in a There's no need for manual Archiving is safe and easy. pre-defined format, they can't data entry. So there's no Great for improving your audit be altered. chance of human error. trail. It's eco-friendly 30 billion invoices The number of paper invoices sent 12 every year in Europe. million trees The number of trees cut down every year to create these invoices. So if we switched just 1% of paper invoices to electronic format this would save approximately: 120,000 3.6 3,000 m million kWh Trees Enough energy to run 10 homes of landfill space for 60 years Everybody saves money E-invoicing means savings of over 60% for both sender and receiver SENDER RECEIVER SAVES SAVES €6.5 €25 Company COST OF SENDING COST OF RECEIVING A paper invoice €1 A paper invoice A e-invoice €30 A e-invoice €4.5 €5 Case studies DHL A global market leader in logistics 80%+ -DHL_ Implementing e-invoicing helped them to get rid of manual tasks and excess waste paper. This saved time and money, Cost reduction and meant that their cost per invoice dropped from over €5 to under €1. £250k London Borough of Camden As a result of using e-invoicing the borough was able to save Camden a quarter of a million Pounds every year in staff and process- Saved every year ing costs. What about small businesses? European SMES are still the group with the lowest adoption rate for e-invoicing. Only 1 in 5 Have sent or received an e-invoice, half the number of bigger businesses. Over 75% 8% Still send paper invoices Send invoices by email 1/10 9% The number of SMES currently Still send invoices by fax satisfied with their paper invoicing. How many small businesses have used e-invoicing across Europe? 59% 52% 42% 33% 4.5% Finland Denmark Belgium Estonia UK It's only a matter of time before you'll need to send your first e-invoice. Let Zervant show you how. INFOGRAPHIC zervant By Zervant We believe that anyone should be able to run their own business. Try our invoicing software at www.zervant.com Sources: www.basware.com www.suomenpankki.fi www.tungsten-network.com www.sharedserviceslink.com www.billentis.com eur-lex.europa.eu www.einvoicingbasics.co.uk www.theseus.fi www.accaglobal.com uknef.org.uk public.spendmatters.eu traxpay.com www.opuscapita.com www.cloudtradenetwork.com ricoh.nl blog.oneposting.com www.eia-gov www.techradar.com