March 11, 2014
Electronic Invoicing in 2013
In the history of the European Union, 2013 will go down as the year in which the barriers of electronic invoicing were removed. New European Directives intend to use technology to improve business processes, with the objective of reducing costs and increasing business efficiency. As such, the European Commission wants to promote electronic invoicing and ensure widespread usage of electronic invoices by the year 2020.
A Journey Through Electronic Invoicing Legislation in the European Community
Since 2001, the European Union regulates electronic invoicing through Directive 2001/115/EC1 . Twelve years later, DF" target="_blank">Directive 2010/45/EU2 - which in most member countries was implemented before January 1st, 2013 - amended the existing regulatory framework for electronic invoicing.
Council Directive 2001/115/CEwas created as a response to the need to legislatively determine how paper and electronic invoices should coexist. In addition to ordinary requirements, the Directive also established that Member States should accept invoices sent by email as long as their authenticity of origin and integrity of content was guaranteed through one of the following methods:
- An Advanced electronic signature.
- A recognized system of computerized data exchange, also called “EDI”, for its acronym in French (Échange de DonnÉes InformatisÉ).
Despite the initial intention of the European Commission to standardize legislation on electronic invoicing, in practice, the Directive was ambiguous and caused many problems in intra-EU transactions. Some of the contradictory statements defined in the Directive are the following: read more here