Europe
17.12.2008
Dear Santa,
We have been really nice, technology-neutral and hardworking Experts this year and look forward to you bringing us a few presents to play around with in 2009.
The first wish is a book - more precisely a handbook. We namely wrote a letter to the EU Commission in July and asked for Equal Treatment of paper and e-invoicing (from VAT-angle) and a bit to our surprise but certainly to our joy we did get it. Now it is naturally up to all the member states to join in with..
The next step to RTE is as we know e-invoicing. Here we have seen any number of great news - together they mean massive progress.
In Finland: - over 70 000 enterprises signed up in Nordea, over 40 000 in OP-bank, great campaign in consumer invoicing by invoice senders,public sector, banks and TietoEnator, Kesko declaring e-invoicing mandatory, several more on the way, state sector aiming for 100% by end 2009, extremely good growth in usage
In EU: - expert group and EU driving equal treatment of ..
The Federation of Finnish Financial Services (FKL) launched today an e-invoicing campaign for consumers in collaboration with the Finnish banks and several companies who send over 1 million invoices per year.
The main goal of the campaign is to raise awareness of consumer's e-invoice and its benefits. Bill Virtanen, a virtual e-invoicing expert, has been hired for the campaign to answer consumers' questions in Suomi24.fi -portal.
Check out the following site for more information (in Finnish):htt..
It seems that the strategy aimed at promoting electronic invoicing needs to be analysed through two different aspects; the internal and the external aspect. Each aspect needs to be tackled with different approaches, but with the sole strategy of becoming fully incorporated with e-invoicing.
Internal Enterprises
Before changes are undergoing, it is vital that there is commitment from all deparments, including the upper management and lower level employees. A corporate vision promoting e-invoic..
The employees of the different departments of City of Tampere need to be aware of why e-Invoicing is better for the City and even for its employees. That is why it is neccesary to raise awarness on one hand.
On the other hand the behaviour of the employees must be aligned with the '100% e-Invoice' goal. That is why we thought it would be good to introduce a bonus system in connection with the level of e-Invocing.
The base of the one-time bonus would be the percentage of e-Invoices in a departm..
The City of Tampere could offer consulting services to suppliers regarding how to use e-invoicing. This would show that Tampere is committed to e-invoicing and suppliers would receive additional help in implementing e-invoicing.
Tampere should also deliver information about e-invoicing to suppliers via seminars, magazines etc. They should highlight the fact that in the near future companies must move towards e-invoicing one way or another (e-invoicing has become more common at the EU-level). I..
Paper invoices have NO future. When we understand that then everything else will flow. Hardly necessary to repeat the 5 mega-class reasons: http://boharald.blogspot.com/2008/08/paper-invoices-have-no- future.html.
But next it is a question of getting there fast - we cannot afford to be slow. Two actions:
1. invoice receivers to follow the example of 5 EU states, Kesko, Nordea, City of Tampere, Lindstrom, TietoEnator = ANNOUNCE that only e- will be accepted after xx.xx.2009 and grant only ver..
Kesko, a Finnish retail specialist, has decided to stop accepting in-country paper invoices from Autumn 2009 onwards.
The list of companies and municipalities having made the same progressive decision in Finland include e.g. Nordea Bank, City of Tampere, Lindström and TietoEnator.
Who will be next?
Finextra is conducting a survey on business attitudes to e-invoicing as part of SibosOnline Green Zone initiative. For each quiz taken, Finextra will offset one tonne of carbon - equating to one return flight from New York to London - through their association with The Carbon Neutral Company and enter all participant names into a prize draw for a top-of-the-range mountain bike.
Take the quiz here:http://www.sibosonline.com/green/quiz.asp
The European Commission has established an Expert Group on e-Invoicing, tasked to propose a European e-Invoicing Framework (EEI Framework) by the end of 2009. The purpose of the EEI Framework is to establish a common conceptual structure to support the provision of e-invoicing services in an open and interoperable manner across Europe.
The Expert Group on e-Invoicing started its work in February 2008. The group consists of 30 specialists representing consumers, SMEs, large enterprises, service ..
