Increase your eInvoicing capability
Increasing your eInvoicing capabilities may change the way you currently receive and process invoices. It will likely also impact your suppliers. Follow the A-NZ Industry Practice Statement Invoice ContentExternal Link overarching principles for Peppol invoice content:
- When the seller has relevant data, it should be provided in the eInvoice. At a minimum, sellers should ensure that all relevant data that would otherwise be contained in a PDF invoice is also available in the eInvoice.
- All data should be placed in the semantically correct Peppol invoice elements, as defined in the PINT A-NZ Billing specificationExternal Link.
- Buyers and their access points should not reject eInvoices that comply with the Peppol invoice specification. If eInvoices fail non-Peppol business rule validation (such as purchase order (PO) format checks or 3-way matching), buyers should use an invoice response message or communicate out of band.
- Buyers' systems should search eInvoices for required data as it may not be in the expected data element.
- Buyers should consider the sellers’ potential software limitations and balance their chosen information requirements with the burden on sellers to provide bespoke information.
Change management approach
In line with these principles, develop a change management approach to support uplifting your eInvoicing capabilities. Consider what guidance and support will need to be updated and communicated to staff as systems, workflows and what they see and be asked to approve may change. Consider the following:
- Work towards automating as many Accounts Payable and eInvoicing processes as possible. For example, search for a PO or reference number or a buyer contact email address to automatically route for approval, and check against master vendor, PO and any goods receipt records. If the eInvoice cannot be processed automatically, see Exception management.
- eInvoices will arrive in your central Accounts Payable system. They do not arrive in email inboxes. Everyone involved in procurement across your organisation – Accounts Payable teams, contract managers, purchasers and financial delegates – will see the differences including system-generated alerts, viewing and approving invoices in workflow processing and ERP software. Changes could also extend to reconciling goods receipts against purchase or work orders to improve efficiency of the processing.
- Procurement policy, contracts and payment terms may need to be updated (see Government payment terms (RMG 417)). Suppliers will need to be notified and may require help with the change too.
Example: eInvoice delivery and routing change
Before adopting eInvoicing, Agency A had all its suppliers email their invoices directly to the purchasing officers or teams before being approved and entered in the finance system for payment.
Once eInvoicing is adopted they are delivered to its central Accounts Payable system, which automatically sends eInvoices to the appropriate person or resource pool for approval based on matching a buyer reference number.
The agency also required suppliers, that don't use eInvoicing yet, to send emails to a central Accounts Payable mailbox to be processed though the system the same way. As a result, both invoices and eInvoices are managed consistently and the agency processes and pays all suppliers on time.
End of example