An E-invoicing Pioneer Assesses the Global State of Compliance

How many invoices does your company process each quarter? And how many different invoicing applications and accounting systems are used to process those invoices?

If you don’t know, you’re not alone. However, if your company is, or will be, subject to the e-invoicing and related real-time reporting requirements being implemented throughout the European Union (EU) and other countries, addressing those questions is crucial from a tax compliance perspective.

“Surprisingly, few people know the number of invoices that their company processes or the details of the existing solution that they have in place,” points out Billentis Owner and CEO Marcus Laube, in a Vertex Tax Matters podcast. The discussion covers the current state of e-invoicing mandates, leading compliance practices and e-invoicing compliance solutions. “This is especially the case when we look at multinational companies, where there might be smaller solutions in specific locations and countries.”

Marcus, an e-invoicing pioneer whose firm publishes the Global E-invoicing and Tax Compliance report, emphasizes that it’s important for organizations subject to e-invoicing mandates to maintain a global, centralized view of all invoicing processes. “It’s also important to understand that there is a difference between electronic invoicing and e-reporting,” Marcus emphasizes. “Everybody is probably aware of these different e-reporting requirements coming up, but they’re not necessarily linked with mandatory electronic invoicing—even though that’s often the case.”

Marcus’ insights align with what we at Vertex have seen work well from an e-invoicing compliance standpoint. The most effective and efficient approaches tend to support e-invoicing and real-time reporting requirements with an end-to-end VAT compliance solution suite—an approach that provides scalable and streamlined e-invoice management, seamless integration to financial systems and global country coverage.

As tax groups evaluate e-invoicing automation solutions, they should look for a few key functionalities and features, including: 

• Solutions for e-invoicing processes that support and enhance indirect tax reporting
• Multi-country solution provider that easily expands as new mandates emerge
• Creation, validation, submission, clearance and e-archiving of approved e-invoices
• Support for accounts receivable (AR) and accounts payable (AP) processes for B2B business-to-business and business-to-government (B2G) transactions
• A secure, cloud-based solution that can deliver streamlined efforts and costs year-over-year, as well as convenient data archiving and retrieval.

If you’re grappling with the ever-changing landscape of invoicing compliance requirements (today or in the near future), tune in to our podcast. You can also explore more details on e-invoicing compliance automation here.