Latin America is the world’s leader in government electronic bill mandates, as authorities there tackle issues like invoice fraud and a lack of transparency in government procurement — efforts that proponents of those mandates say can positively influence the private sector.
In a recent blog post mentioning Billentis study, Sovos highlighted a number of the successful eInvoice campaigns across Latin America, with Brazil reporting $58 million in taxation revenue increases as a result of such a mandate, while both Chile and Mexico were able to lower their VAT gaps by up to 50 percent. Colombia, meanwhile, employed an e-Invoicing mandate to decrease tax evasion from 50 percent, researchers found.
For businesses, digitization of invoices promotes process automation in the distribution chain and procure-to-pay arenas, the blog article mentioned.
Those advantages are spreading beyond Latin America, also, with the most recent initiatives focused in Europe.
Late last month Sovos declared the purchase of Foriba, an eInvoicing firm situated in Turkey. At the time, Sovos noted the nation is”one of the few countries outside Latin America using a mature e-Invoicing mandate.”
Italy
One of these is Italy, in which delayed invoice obligations in both the private and public industry have increased concerns regarding business-to-business (B2B) and government-to-business (G2B) payment clinics, as well as regarding the government’s rising debt. At the beginning of the calendar year, Italy’s eInvoicing mandate to the personal industry came into effect, requiring all transactions — with exceptions for certain smaller businesses — to ensure invoices are accessible via electronic means.
The traceability of trades via B2B and business-to-consumer (B2C) eInvoicing enables Italy to combat fraud and tax evasion, reports in Fieldfisher mentioned last October, and adds on to Italy’s existing e-Invoice mandate for its public sector, that is in effect since 2015.
While e-Invoicing can, in principle, promote faster seller payments, the Italian government’s lengthening supplier payment practices suggest that the public sector eInvoice mandate hasn’t had such an effect.
Since Italy’s e-Invoice mandate continues to evolve, same regulatory obligations have surfaced in both Norway and Ireland.
Norway
Reports in ZDNet a week stated Norway lawmakers have introduced regulations to need eInvoicing in the public sector for both local and state level authorities in an attempt to accelerate digitization and save money.
“The use of eInvoices stored the nation nearly [$544 million] from 2018,” said Norway minister of digitalization Nikolai Astrup in a declaration. “As we now mandate state and local authorities to demand e-Invoices, we expect that the gains to be even higher.”
Electronic invoicing is on the increase in Norway already within the European Union’s PEPPOL digital document exchange, reports noted, with more than 90 million eInvoices delivered in Norway this past year. Okay, so one company from Australia is capable enough to maintain and get you the best in class e-invoicing services! Check Xero CBD Bookkeepers Sydney! Highly recommended!
Based on reports, government suppliers will likely be regarded as contracts should they comply with eInvoice mandates.
“Suppliers who wish to compete for public contracts will have to follow the new regulations,” Astrup said, adding that Norway spends roughly $58 billion each year on goods and services for the government. “This will contribute to greater digitalization in the business sector and make sure that more of the procurement procedure becomes digital.”
He told the book that eInvoicing combats mistakes, hastens processes, reduces paper waste, and encourage timely and appropriate vendor payments.
Ireland
Late last month, the European Commission issued formal admissions to 12 member countries, including Ireland, accusing them of failing to apply EU eInvoicing principles in public procurement under the European Directive 2014/55/EU, which demands the public business to get and process standardized eInvoices.
Yet the book discovered that Ireland’s Office of Government Procurement, which established”eInvoicing Ireland” to comply with the EU’s eInvoicing Directive, is currently in the crosshairs of the European Commission.
“The Commission has taken the view that Ireland has not complied with its duties and has taken measures to initiate infringement proceedings,” the report said.
The publication did not note which other member states obtained such letters, but the Commission’s action suggests Europe is hastening its focus on eInvoice mandates following the successes found in Latin America