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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 @DMMagAndAwards
VOTE NOW! VOTING CLOSES ON NOVEMBER 4TH AWARDS CEREMONY: 17TH NOVEMBER 2022, LONDON www.dmawards.com For more information or to book a table please email: abby.penn@btc.co.uk or call on: 07861 682 066
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DM Sep-Oct 2022

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