In April this year, the Austrian Parliament passed a new law which will force any organisation working with the federal Austrian government to use e-invoicing, via a dedicated Government portal. 

The portal will force suppliers to deliver structured e-invoices for all goods or services delivered.  So Austria is joining the growing number of EU Governments mandating the use of e-invoice portals (a move pioneered in Scandinavia). 

One potential issue is that the majority of these portals are proprietary – meaning that different formats may have to be used when dealing with different Governments.  This seems to be in conflict with the upcoming EU e-invoicing directive that is expected to come into effect next year.

It will be interesting to see how these fragmented, country-specific moves to e-invoicing will resolve themselves into more coherent, unified solutions.  But one thing is certain – the drive towards e-invoicing is becoming unstoppable.

There’s more about Austria’s move here: http://eeiplatform.com/7889/austria-mandates-structured-e-invoicing-as-from-1-january-2014/  

We will be attending the 6th ‘Toning up Purchase-to-Pay to Attain Touchless Processing’ conference held by Shared Services Link in London, 19th-21st June.  

We will be showcasing our full range of advanced purchase to pay and e-invoicing solutions which streamline accounting and administrative processes and makes them more efficient. 

The event highlights the benefits of automated, end-to-end P2P processes, and helps AP departments save money, and to exploit the processes to deliver added value across the business through improved visibility of data and business intelligence.

Aimed at organisations looking to achieve a greater synergy between procurement and accounts payable departments, a few places are still available at the conference. Visit http://www.sharedserviceslink.com/file/94149/toning-up-purchase-to-pay-to-attain-touchless-processing.html

Together with the ‘Polish Confederation of private employers and companies’ Orange Poland has created the coalition ‘I choose e-invoicing’ (Wybieram e-fakture), encouraging the country’s companies to move away from the ‘traditional’ paper-based method of sending invoices.  

Orange calculated that if all invoices in Poland were sent electronically, the country would save 340,000 trees from being cut per year. Among the estimated 4 billion invoices sent every year in Poland, at most only 11% are sent electronically.  

Poland is among the last countries in Europe to adopt e-invoicing, highlighting the surge in companies embracing the modern method and its benefits.  Although Poland had a slow take-up because of initial reluctance exhibited by some stakeholders, the initiative has set a clear example of how to achieve e-invoicing, even in the face of adversity.  

It will be interesting to see if other countries follow suit and deploy this coalition approach, to encourage wider adoption of e-invoicing for the benefit of all.

Together with BancTec, we’re exhibiting at the 12th Annual Shared Services and Outsourcing Week event in Amsterdam from 14 – 16 May.

BancTec already uses our complete purchase-to-pay suite, PaletteArena to power the BancTec AP Master SaaS solution which it offers internationally.  AP Master is a comprehensive and fully automated web-based SaaS Accounts Payable solution, offered to customers as either a hosted environment or licensed for customers to deploy in-house. 

Palette and BancTec are also working together to offer the PaletteOnline cloud solution to customers in Sweden to enable more efficient invoice processing, giving companies of any size the fastest possible route to easier, more flexible invoice processing. 

Come along and find out more about our range of advanced solutions to help automate your key business processes.   More details at:  http://www.ssoweek.com/Event.aspx?id=575176

We’ll be attending Fusion 2012, the Institute of Financial Operations’ premiere conference, at the Gaylord Opryland Resort, Nashville, USA, May 13-17th.  The event offers five days of breakout sessions, thought leader sessions, keynotes and networking opportunities across a full spectrum of financial operations, to over 1700 attendees. 

At Fusion we’ll be showcasing PaletteOnline, our cloud-based invoicing automation solution, which gives companies access to easier and more efficient invoice processing without the need for lengthy and costly set-up, as well as our PaletteArena, our complete enterprise purchase-to-pay suite.

Find out more about Fusion 2012 at http://www.financialops.org/web/conferences/fusion-2012