How to maximize e-invoice acceptation from your partners?

One of the main obstacles to adopt electronic processes is the resistance from your B2B partners. The best advice is therefore to carefully consider their needs and to design a good communication and on-boarding process.

However convinced YOU are about the benefits THEY would get from adopting your solution, be sure that they will only adopt the solution they choose for themselves. Unfortunately, there isn’t a solution that everybody agrees is the best, so be flexible.

Although there is a strong correlation between the size of the company and the (sophistication of the) solution they are likely to adopt, they are many exceptions.

We surveyed a sample of companies and here is the diversity of answers to the question:
How should the invoice be delivered to you?

For your customers, we advise that you set-up a system that supports the sending of structured invoice data based on a standard (enabling capture in an ERP package or sending to a netbanking system) and the sending of an email+PDF (which is likely to be printed but is more and more accepted).

We get up to 100% customer acceptation among our users. 80% being very common.

For your suppliers, we advise that you allow them to work with their preferred partner to send you structured data. For small suppliers, more and more online invoicing systems allow to generate structured data. Some are even free of charge. Be ready to accept lower acceptation rates, especially from low volume suppliers.