eInvoicing: EDI for everyone

For years corporates and multinationals have used Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) to exchange large volumes of invoice and transaction related data, thus avoiding the processing overheads of paper and PDF invoices.

The EDI technology they relied on was typically bespoke and every connection with a new supplier would see either side having to make changes or add a new format to cater to the other party’s system ultimate meaning the expense of adopting a supporting multiple standards and formats to relieve the finance team burden, but inadvertently adding cost back in to support this myriad of feeds.  

Some verticals adopted industry standards, but this was often limited to country profiles and there was no government mandated, or international common standard available for everyone to adopt. 

If you were a small to medium then adopting one of these bespoke EDI feeds was often uneconomic unless you only had one trading partner and they made a system available for you.

For Australia and New Zealand, that all changed in February 2019 when both governments announced they were adopting the Pan-European Public Procurement Online (Peppol) procurement document exchange standards.  Peppol paves the way for all businesses, no matter how small, to exchange eInvoices with customers and suppliers.  It levels the playing field by letting organisations of all shapes and sizes benefit from the faster payments, improved cashflow, reduced processing costs, improved security and financial visibility that come with eInvoicing.

Acume development was started at this time by the Streamline Business Group who have been providing accounts payable and accounts receivable solutions to business on both sides of the Tasman over the last decade.  Acume was designed around the Peppol eInvoicing standard and includes configurable workflows and approval process to enable eInvoicing adoption for small to mediums right through to corporates.

Its 2022, EDI for everyone is here.