e-Invoicing What do Government Agencies Need to Know?

Posted by Link4 Team on 24/03/2021

The Australian Government has mandated e-Invoicing for all Federal agencies. Around a third needs to have a solution by 30 June 2021, and the remainder need to implement a solution over the following 12 months. It’s expected that State and Local governments will also be mandating e-Invoicing next. But was it involved? How long does it take to implement e-Invoicing? And who should you use to get e-Invoicing setup?

The topic of e-Invoicing may confuse or concern some, but it’s really easy to understand and implement. Sure, it’s a different concept, but the benefit it brings to our economy is huge.

How will e-Invoicing benefit the economy?

The reason Australia is implementing e-Invoicing is to make life easier and better for business owners – especially small business owners (SMEs). It’s been said that Australia would save $3 billion per year if just 15% of businesses were active with e-Invoicing. This is due to a number of factors such as reducing invoice fraud, preventing processing errors from occurring, and reducing the cost required to create manual invoices in the first place(such as staff, IT, printing, etc). The Federal Government has also agreed to pay e-Invoices within 5 days – which allows a business to manage their cash flow better. So mandating e-Invoicing has the capability to support businesses of any size in Australia.

What is e-Invoicing and how does it work?

In its simplest form, e-Invoicing is the instant delivery of invoice information between Accounting systems – without the need for email and PDFs. Basically, the Accounting systems talk together in real-time. Details of a transaction flow directly from a supplier’s Accounting system and are populated into the correct fields within the customer’s system. This process is made possible by SaaS systems that use ‘Access Points’ to transmit data. These Access Points effectively act as a ‘middleman’.

The Australian Government has agreed to use Pan-European Public Procurement On-Line e-Invoicing standards, or Peppol e-Invoicing for short. This simply means invoice data is transmitted in a specific universal standard format so it can be easily read and populated by any Accounting system.

To set up e-Invoicing, all you need to do is select a Peppol accredited Access Point (such as Link4) that can work with your ERP/Accounting system, and then you’re set.

How long does it take to implement e-Invoicing?

It doesn’t take long for a government department to be active with e-Invoicing. Link4 can implement e-Invoicing in around 2 weeks. This also includes all testing and training for your team.

Does Link4 have any previous experience implementing e-Invoicing to Australian Government departments?

Link4 has already worked with several government departments to implement e-Invoicing. We’re currently the most popular commercially available Peppol Access Point in use with the Federal Government. We have helped departments such as the Department of Treasury and the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources to set up their e-Invoicing capabilities.

I need to set up e-Invoicing for my department – where do I start?

Get in touch with us today and we’ll show you how easy it is for your department to be active with e-Invoicing. Setting up e-Invoicing is much easier than you’d expect!