E-Invoicing Revision Should Focus More on SMEs Needs

Currently, there are several e-invoicing systems in the EU Member States that very often use national standards and are therefore impractical. As a result, e-invoicing often creates an additional burden for companies, especially SMEs that want to enter into public procurement contract with public authorities from different EU country.

The main objectives of one of the EC initiatives under the Single Market Act II are to propose and provide common standards for e-invoicing and pave the way for a fully harmonized and interoperable EU system. A study made for the European Commission on this topic shows that e-invoicing has a potential of huge cost savings, not only for large companies, but SMEs as well. While large companies quite often have enough resources to implement e-invoicing, that is not the case for SMEs. Standardization still seems to be the biggest bottleneck of proper take-up of e-invoicing. Not only the standards vary from State to State, but each sector has different billing system as well. Furthermore, many companies are still hesitant regarding security and authentication issues of all the online processes.

In addition, different taxation systems and invoicing regulations across the EU further complicate the situation. Apart from creating a common European standard, the EU policies targeted on SMEs’ up-take of e-invoicing should focus on affordability of accounting software, provision of suitable solutions including cloud and raising awareness.