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Say Goodbye to Paper, the Electronic Invoice is Here
Madrid, 19th February 2009. The current trend among top-level companies is to reduce the use of paper in all their movements, achieving cost reductions, making them easier to handle, eliminating the accumulation of paper documents and protecting the environment.
However, leaving paper to one side is not always easy. Converting our internal documents to an electronic version poses no problems at all, as it is not necessary to demonstrate their official validity to any institution. However, when dealing with important sensitive documents for the company, which must also be guaranteed by a financial institution, we must take into account the implications of cutting out paper.
This is the case of invoices, which are very important documents, as they mark the purchase or sale of products and services, which help to improve each company’s management, and, therefore the use of these two concepts, Electronic Invoicing and Verified Invoice Scanning, is becoming more and more widespread every day.
We have often heard of electronic invoicing but do we really know what it means? It is computer-generated invoicing which can be transmitted via a communications system (e.g. the Internet), whereby it is important to guarantee its integrity and authenticity.
There is also a growing trend towards the process of scanning paper documents; with the purpose of replacing them with their corresponding electronic files with the same validity, and being able to destroy huge quantities of paper. Certified scanning achieves savings in documental management and a reduction of tax costs.
Similarly to paper invoices, electronic invoices are subject to regulations which guarantee their integrity and authenticity. In Europe, Electronic Invoicing is regulated by Directive 115/2001 and it had to be adopted by each EU member country before 31st December 2003.
Among the Benefits of Electronic Invoicing and Certified Scanning, we find that, depending on the size of each company, the savings as regards invoice management, in terms of sending, receiving, storage, searches, signing, payments, etc., are between 40% and 80%.
The savings mainly come from the reduction in human intervention, which minimises errors. It also reduces the storage costs as there is no paper to be stored.
This gives rise to increases in efficiency as processes such as the management/approval are potentially speeded up to become truly fast, where the same invoice becomes accessible for all authorised users.
Likewise, there is a notable improvement in the traceability control, making possible fraud very unlikely.
Finally, the auditing task becomes more straightforward as it is easier to obtain reports on processes and management control.
Digital invoicing displaces paper invoices, however, in order to provide the optimum service it is important to trust in a specialised third-party in order to make the most of their know-how and implement the solution that best adapts to each company’s specific needs.Luis César Aguilar
Process & ECM Consultant SGAIM
