The drive towards e-invoicing has picked up further momentum with the announcement that as of July 1st 2012, the Norwegian government will  only accept invoices from suppliers in electronic format. 

The decision means millions of e-invoices will now be sent to a central electronic payment processing point, which both suppliers and public sector bodies can access.

Data from Norway’s official procurement body shows around 11m invoices are received by state bodies annually, many of which are still in paper format.  It’s believed that nearly 500,000 organisations will have to start submitting invoices electronically rather than on paper.

We’ve covered the potential savings and benefits from wide-scale e-invoice deployments before:  it will be interesting to see how many national governments follow the lead from Norway.

Link:  http://eeiplatform.com/7638/norway-to-accept-only-e-invoices-as-from-1-july-2012-through-a-single-provider/