Cost calculations

Model different scenarios

This assessment allows you to model different scenarios based on any adoption rate – that is, the percentage of your customers and suppliers you think you can transition to Peppol.

The assessment result combines the ROI for both accounts payable and receivable so you can model a scenario in which you become enabled for both sending and receiving in the first year. Alternatively, you can choose to rerun the assessment for either accounts payable or receivable to model the outcome for sequencing one after the other.

Your investment may be much lower if you are using an eInvoicing-ready product. For more information, see How to get started with eInvoicing.

Calculation basis

Processing paper and PDF invoices consists of typical steps for both sending and receiving. Depending on the business process, eInvoicing can remove certain invoice processing steps or reduce the time spent on these steps.

The calculations in this assessment are based on the average time you spend on each step and the proportion of invoices that require exception handling. Importantly, this should only be for paper and PDF invoices and should exclude EDI invoices.

Known cost per invoice

This option should be used if you already have a clearly defined and calculated cost for generating and processing invoices within your organisation. This might be based on internal time-tracking or operational benchmarks you've previously established, and should reflect the full cost per invoice, including labour, overheads, and any other relevant expenses.

If you choose the known cost option, your known cost must be a dollar amount per invoice as a combined average for paper and PDF only.

Customised cost per invoice

The customised cost option allows you to input averaged data about how long it takes to complete typical invoice processing steps in your organisation, as well as what proportions of invoices are subject to a range of typical exceptions. We then use average wage data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics to calculate an invoice processing dollar cost based on your invoice volumes.

Average cost per invoice

If you chose the average cost option, the calculator uses average data across all business types to estimate the time it typically takes to complete these processing steps and fix invoices subject to exceptions. While both the customised and average cost options follow the same calculation method, the key difference lies in the data source – that is, customised inputs versus industry-wide averages.

The average cost data is based on estimates from Deloitte Access Economics (DAE). The average processing cost for a:

• PDF invoice is $27.67
• paper invoice is $30.87
• eInvoice is $9.18.

While these DAE estimates date back to 2016, they closely align with the findings of the 2024 APEC report on the Interoperability of Electronic Invoicing Systems in the APEC RegionExternal Link, which in turn reflects similar conclusions from the 2024 European Commission study on public procurement – Benchmarking innovation procurement investments and policy frameworks across EuropeExternal Link.

This is a shared cost estimate between the invoice sender and receiver. How this cost is split between accounts payable and accounts receivable can vary substantially. For the purposes of this assessment 40% of this cost is attributed to the accounts receivable process and 60% to accounts payable.

Most of the cost for PDF and paper invoices is attributable to the manual work required to enter the invoice data into your systems and process it for approval and payment, including dealing with exceptions and fixing errors.

Sales invoice cost

Cost per sales invoice has been calculated based on the typical time spent on the end-to-end process of generating an invoice through to the payment appearing in the bank account.

Table 1: Sales invoice process

Creation – 6 minutes	Sending – 3 minutes	Reconciliation – 1 minute
Time spent on collecting or triggering the billing information from various systems. The average time spent on billing is dependent on whether there is a sales order in place and whether the billing is based on products, services or recurring contract billing.	Time required to produce the invoice from the system, validate it, check customer details, and then send it to the customer either on paper or in other forms.	Time spent on payment reconciliation, an accounting process that ensures a company's internal records of payments owed and due match the transactions that appear on the bank statements.

Sales invoice exceptions

In manual invoice processing, the percentage of exceptions increases and, in turn, increases the cost of a sales invoice. The calculations in this assessment use an average processing cost per minute that is applied to the average time required to fix this type of exception and the proportion of invoices that may contain this exception (average exception rate).

The individual cost components, exception rates, and time attributed to each step in the calculation are described in the following table.

Table 2: Cost components, exception rates and time attributed for sale invoice exceptions

Exception type	Average exception rate	Average time to correct
Reconciliation: Some bank transactions may not perfectly match accounting records for various reasons. In these cases, failed transactions need to be analysed and corrected.	10%	4 min
Collect payment: Following up late payments from customers, including reminders, contacting customers, and further actions.	48%	5 min
Delivery issues: The invoice has not reached the customer for various reasons. Typical examples are incorrect information on the invoice, incorrect email address, or the invoice was lost during postal delivery.	21%	16 min

Purchase invoice cost

The cost per purchase invoice has been calculated based on the typical time spent on the end-to-end process of receiving an invoice to paying the invoice.

Table 3: Purchase invoice process

Receipt – 7 minutes	Validation – 2 minutes	Review – 7 minutes	Approval – 5 minutes
Receiving the invoice and entering it in your systems.	Time required to validate invoice data, check for supplier validity, and tax invoice validation.	Time spent on business review of the invoice detail.	Time spent on approving the invoice for payment, including one or multiple approval steps based on your business process.

Purchase invoice exceptions

In manual invoice processing, the percentage of exceptions typically increases and, in turn, increases the cost of a purchase invoice. The individual cost components, exception rates, and time attributed to each step in the calculation are described in the following table.

Table 4: Individual cost components, exception rates and time attributed for purchase invoice exceptions

Exception type	Generic exception rate	Generic time to correct
Contested payment: Invoices requiring clarification with the supplier prior to payment. eInvoicing can help reduce the frequency of these exceptions.	10%	20 min
Processing exception: Exceptions in processing invoices requiring investigation by the finance department or reviewer – for example, due to limited or incorrect data on the invoice.	24%	15 min
Late payment: Time required to respond to enquiries about late supplier payments.	48%	5 min
Data accuracy: Manual entry of invoice data resulting in errors on invoices that must be fixed.	3.6%	5 min