DM Sep-Oct 2022

Dm OPINION: E-INVOICING
and authorities in the EU have been
required by law to receive PEPPOL
invoices.
The UK is one of 31 European nations
that have now started to implement
electronic invoicing. PEPPOL claims to
allow a single e-Procurement link to the
outside world dealing with current and
future suppliers, both large and small in
the UK and globally. A supplier requires
just one connection to an 'Access Point'
and PEPPOL provides a common link for
e-ordering, e-invoicing, and electronic
credit notes. Currently it is set up for
the NHS and its vendors. Through this
Access Point and link a business can
send Invoices and other business
document to all NHS clients and any
other PEPPOL-connected commercial
partners in the UK or internationally.
MANAGING ACCESS
An Access Point is a connection to a
secure transmission point - in the case
of Europe the PEPPOL network. The
supplier purchases access from an
Access Point service provider which
allows them to exchange electronic
documents with other companies that
are linked to the same or another
Access Point. The Access Points have a
directory which allows them to route
the XML based electronic invoice to
another access point that has a
connection with a company's customer.
This should make it somewhat easier
for a UK company to trade throughout
Europe, since it no longer needs to deal
with different national formatting
standards - and if adopted widely in the
UK, will help automate invoice
processing. But it is not only Europe
that is adopting this. The US has an
initiative under way supported by the
Federal Reserve which is supporting the
Business Payments Coalition to create a
similar system to PEPPOL that is in pilot
at present. It uses commercial banks to
provide the Access Points and it has
plans to expand from invoices to
include remittances, leveraging the
ISO20022 standard that has been
adopted by SWIFT.
Currently there are more than 200
certified Access Points around the world
which form a secure global network to
send (and receive) invoices and other
electronic documents. The Access Point
handles the process of transporting it
to the recipient's Access Point that then
forwards the invoice to the recipient. A
business can choose whatever Access
Point it likes, which could be a PEPPOL
certified one, but it would perhaps
make sense for the UK to get banks to
provide the Access Points, as in the US.
WHAT'S THE DM ANGLE?
Why should this be interesting to
companies in the document
management space? On the sending
side, the accounting or ERP system that
the sender is using may or may not
support the UBL standard - but it can
always create a PDF, and there are a
number of parsing tools that can
convert the PDF to the UBL standard.
Some companies will however prefer
to send a paper invoice. After a fraud
attempt involving email hacking that
resulted in a modified PDF file, we
changed back from using PDF's to
sending paper, since that represents
less risk for my company. In this case
the Access points need to provide a
service to convert a paper invoice to a
UBL formatted XML file. This would
represent a new market for scanner
vendors and for software that provides
"Invoice Processing" - usually meaning
analysis and extraction of data from
paper invoices. This might require the
receiving company's Access Point
sending Purchase Order data to the
supplier's Access Point to enable
accurate conversion.
The recipient's Access Point would
normally pass on the UBL file to the
payer. But many AP systems -
particularly in small companies - may
be unable to process a UBL file. The
logical approach, which is what seem
to be happening in the US, is for the
Access Point to convert the UBL file into
a PDF that can be read by the receiving
company. But better would be for the
Access Point to know what
accounting/ERP system is being used
and to format the invoice into the
appropriate format to ingest it
automatically.
After a number of false starts, I
believe this move to 'electronify'
invoices has a chance of success.
However, it will be important to
understand how small companies,
which account for more than 50% of
all UK businesses, create and process
their invoices and for the Access Point
suppliers to offer services to make that
easy. If they just say "Oh, here is an
electronic delivery mechanism" this will
be bound to fail, except maybe for
business to government, where it can
be mandated.
More info: www.xamcor.com
34 September/October 2022 www.document-manager.com
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