Commercial Payments International

According to a study conducted by IAPP-TAWPI, an industry association, released by Basware, a Finnish e-procurement and e-invoicing software company, 80% of accounts payable (AP) departments surveyed recognize the importance of e-invoicing to their organizations. Obstacles to achieving greater adoption include insufficient business infrastructures among buyers and suppliers, supplier resistance, inadequate funding and a perceived long learning curve.

Companies that have implemented e-invoicing services cited faster transactions, improved processes, greater accuracy and improved compliance and audits as key benefits of e-invoicing, according to the report. Benefits also included improved customer service and supplier relations. The report showed, however, that results were directly proportional to the number of e-invoices received, and only 26% of respondents' companies fully automated the invoice receipt and approval process, with data captured and loaded without manual intervention.

A key obstacle to e-invoice adoption is the response from suppliers, with the results showing that only 13% of AP departments said that suppliers reacted very favorably to e-invoicing and the majority were somewhat favorable or neutral. Three percent had a negative reaction. Almost 50% of respondents indicated that updating supplier contracts to require e-invoicing was the most effective way to increase the number of e-invoices, followed by communicating to suppliers that paper invoices were no longer acceptable.

Fifty-eight percent of companies surveyed continue to manually capture invoice data and have a manual review process, and for those that started an e-invoicing program in the past year, only 2% receive more than 40% of their invoices electronically.

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