La cellule de recherche de la Deutsche Bank a publié le 3 mai dernier une analyse de la situation du « e-invoicing » en Europe.
Cette analyse met en évidence les opportunités d’économie mais rappelle également la nécessité d’homogénéiser l’environnement juridique entre les différents Etats lorsque l’on parle de facturation papier ou électronique.
Retrouvez ce rapport de 16 pages ici : E-invoicing : Final step of an efficient invoicing process
E-invoicing is creating great expectations. Policymakers and interest groups expect the electronic invoice to yield potentially huge savings and open up new areas of business. The interest being shown by companies, however, is muted. Just 22% of companies use e-invoicing and only 5% of invoices are currently sent electronically. Only integrated processes yield cost savings. The big potential savings come not from spending less on printing or postage, but from using modern, automated processes for all invoice-related tasks. Advocates of the electronic invoice believe that it will trigger these modernisations in a catalytic process, whereas sceptics see e-invoicing as more like the final stage in an already largely automated invoice processing system.
The legal situation and the lack of interoperability are holding back the rollout. Lawmakers need to grant the electronic invoice completely equal status to the paper invoice and to dispel legal uncertainties. Moreover, the technical fragmentation of the market has to be resolved. Each user has to be able to interchange electronic invoices with every other user regardless of the selected e-invoicing provider and its application. Constructing such a network requires a common technical standard that enables interoperability between the e-invoicing providers.