E-invoicing: the advantages are countless!
On 21 March 2013 the Government of the Brussels-Capital Region approved the note on the Brussels plan for administrative simplification and the dematerialisation of invoices addressed to the Belgian governments, for the purpose of encouraging electronic invoicing within the administration.
The Belgian VAT Code was amended accordingly and from now on paper and electronic invoices have the same status. For example, an electronic signature is not required on an electronic invoice.
Context
By 2020, the European Commission aims for electronic invoices to be more widely established in Europe, an objective the Belgian government also supports.
After all, the mass adoption of e-invoicing within the EU could lead to significant savings, estimated at approximately 240 billion euro within six years.
In Belgium around 3.5 billion euros could be saved annually if all invoices would be sent and processed digitally.
The federal administrative simplification action plan 2012-2015 has set an intermediary objective, stating that by the end of the legislature 25% of all invoice streams should be handled electronically.
The Brussels plan for administrative simplification for the 2015-2020 period which is currently being drawn up, aims to make e-invoicing mandatory within the BRPS by 2020.
Advantages of e-invoicing
- Reduce the administrative burden;
- Reduce costs related to processing invoices;
- Faster booking of invoices that have been received, with the possibility of better management of the funds by the treasury department;
- Abolition of the delay interest for late payment of received and approved invoices;
- Savings in the area of physical archiving;
- Possibility to give feedback to the sender of an invoice thanks to a "tracking and tracing" system, which can be used to check the status of an invoice (received, submitted for approval, etc.) ;
- Warranties related to receipt of an e-invoice by the recipient thanks to the acknowledgement of receipt.
Implementation within the BRPS:
The BRPS is actively working on the implementation of electronic invoicing. The first was the acceptance of invoices in PDF format, at the beginning of 2016. In parallel, we are working on directly receiving and processing e-invoices in SAP in the future.
We would therefor like to ask you to try using electronic invoices rather than paper ones, as we have everything to gain by doing so!
