E-invoicing has increased steadily in the last few years.

According to the 2012 Global E-Invoicing Study, 73% of respondents stated that they had used e-invoicing in one way or another. This represents a 14% increase over the previous year.

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The US Federal Government, the largest single purchases of goods and services in the country uses electronic invoicing for 40% of its invoices (of a total 19 million invoices per year).

E-invoicing is a valuable new cost-cutting measure for both businesses and the government.

In fact, the US treasury has estimated that just by using e-invoicing throughout federal government departments, they would be able to cut costs by 50%, an annual savings of $450 million.

It’s no secret then that online electronic invoicing and billing offers greater convenience and cost-cutting for companies big and small.

Let’s look at some trends in the fast developing e-invoicing market.

Government is leading the way

As you can see in the map below, areas such as Scandinavia, South America (Brazil especially) and Mexico are leading the way in e-invoicing adoption.

European nations, as well as America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the rest of South America are working to catch up. Asia, Russia, and large parts of Africa are lagging quite far behind.

The countries catching up are being pushed by their governments to comply with e-invoicing requirements.

In fact, the US Office of Management and Budget has stated that all government agencies should move to e-invoicing by the end of 2018. The European Union has also mandated that Public Administrators have to accept e-invoices by November 2018.

Of course, Latin America is doing well, with Brazil leading the way. However, the other nations, such as Mexico, Ecuador, Peru and others are looking to expand their e-invoicing as well.

The evolving economy

One of the major benefits of e-invoices is that they allow for faster, much more accurate data between purchaser and supplier. For this reason, businesses and governments will be moving towards what’s known as “real-time economy.”

This means that the purchaser can quickly validate the data. The alternative is to send paper invoices to the purhcaser with significant delays.

That will save a lot of time because suppliers will be able to receive their rejections or notifications of incomplete or inaccurate data within a few hours or days. This will be a significant improvement over the weeks and months it can sometimes take.

With just a day’s response on e-invoices, for example, the supplier can update and send the invoice again.

That will help cut down late payments and penalties severely. In fact, the US Federal Government believes it will be able to use the saved money for critical agency missions, rather than paying late fees.

Improved business in general

Of course, this is not just a large government or business benefit. The benefits of e-invoicing extend to small and medium-sized businesses as well.

E-invoicing is set to help businesses in a few ways:

• it will help cut costs by reducing the number needed in the invoicing and billing department
• it will help save time as business owners or department heads won’t have to spend much time chasing late payers
• it will help increase cash flow as invoices will be paid faster
• it will improve security and minimize fraud
• it will help improve customer relationships, as the time for finding and fixing errors much shorter

As can be obviously seen, these five points are crucial for businesses of all sizes, especially for smaller businesses.

The benefits of e-invoicing

As e-invoicing continues to trend upwards, we’ll see greater benefits for all organizations, businesses and governments. This will lead to much faster payment, dispute resolution, and greater investment with the money and time saved.

Not only that, online e-invoicing software provides many benefits on its own that will help business owners run their businesses more efficiently.

The future of e-invoicing is indeed bright.