Billentis’s latest newsletter reports on how the slow global adoption of e-invoicing is continuing with:

• New standards being adopted:
  • Australian industry and government will probably be operating a unified, national standard for electronic invoicing within just one year after a joint private-public council approved the final framework for implementation. After months of consultation, a framework has now been approved by the Digital Business Council – comprising industry bodies, technology companies and government agencies - for introducing the standard. It stipulates the use of the ISO-approved OASIS universal business language (UBL) XML specification for messaging and the eBMS 3.0 standard for transport.
  • Costa Rica aims to implement universal e-invoicing by 2017. According to the Ministry of Finance, currently, only some 4,600 businesses in the country use e-invoicing.
  • Germany is preparing legislation to mandate B2G e-invoicing: Draft legislation has now been published which describes the requirements for the public sector, but also goes far beyond EU Directive 2014/55/EU. For example, it will affect all invoices, regardless of the amount. Moreover, it paves the way for the government to define further requirements by ordinance, e.g. mandating suppliers to send invoices in electronic format only. However, this ordinance has not yet been drafted. 
• New initiatives to force the use of e-invoicing:
  • Chile plans to fine SMEs if they issue paper invoices: Businesses located in urban areas, with annual sales above 61.5 million Chilean pesos (roughly 85,000 Euro) are required to issue invoices electronically. As a result, 313,642 businesses now issue e-invoices, representing 86% of all invoices in the country. However, more than 20,000 SMEs of this size have not yet adopted e-invoicing. 
  • Netherlands: The Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs has decided that for all contracts signed after 1 January 2017, only XML electronic invoices from suppliers will be accepted.

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CTMfile take: MNCs and the treasury associations have a responsibility to encourage the usage of e-invoicing. In your company, what is the most effective way you have found to encourage usage of e-invoicing?