Programme

The public sector is mobilized for a while to help electronic invoicing become the norm. Europe has paid a significant contribution to this program. In Belgium, Flanders has worked together with the Federal government to set up a common approach on the reception of electronic invoices. Starting next year, sending invoices electronically is gradually becoming a legal obligation for all invoices to the Belgian public sector. The Secretary of State is going to tell us more about the actions that the public sector is taking to support the enterprises in meeting this new obligation, and to turn it into a gain in efficiency, getting rid of the burden of manual processing of invoices.

#Laws and Regulations

During this session Billit will show you good, bad and even ugly examples of how companies handle e-invoicing. It is all based on their own experiences while onboarding over 27.000 business owners on Peppol who collectively sent and received 20M e-invoices through Billit.

#Onboarding Customers and Suppliers

The unique collaboration between the Belgian Institute for Tax Advisors and Accountants (ITAA) and Unifiedpost provides a turnkey e-invoicing solution that can be used directly in all companies. The solution can be easy integrated into the processes of the external accountants who traditionally serve small and medium-sized companies as independent advisors. As an unique collaboration we reach 1.2 million companies that can easily prepare for the future obligation in the field of e-invoicing.

#Onboarding Customers and Suppliers     #Streamlining and Integration of Processes     #Purchase/Procure to Pay (P2P)

It’s been a while since Europe defined a standard for e-invoicing using a four corner e-delivery model and the EN-16931 core invoice specification. As many business applications have been adapted to this standard, it’s use has become more and more prominent, to be used for:

• B2G as well as B2B exchanges.
• Cross-border transactions as well as national presence.
• Inbound (purchase invoices) as well as outbound (sales invoices)
• Other procurement documents

Peppol is a common choice to access Mercurius, XRechnung, UBL.BE, NHS England, Factur-X, ZugFerd, SimplerInvoicing, Chorus Pro, E-Rechnung. The Peppol network is also being rolled-out outside Europe such as in Japan, Singapore, Australia, New Zeeland.
As soon as you endorse this accepted way of working, you get access to a promising, expansive market: not just for Europe but on a global scale.

• The same UBL is used in non-VAT regions (e.g. GST or US Sales Tax).
• The same four corner exchange standard is used in US/MX/CA with BPC as well as the highway between service providers within the association (EESPA).

#Onboarding Customers and Suppliers #Standards #Streamlining and Integration of Processes

Thanks to their many years of commitment and active cooperation with the Flemish Government, they have succeeded in presenting good results, which was in 2021 proven by receiving the e-Fa Award ‘Entity of the Flemish Government’. At that time they only had 90% e-invoices.

The work was certainly not finished by then and they wanted to continue striving to increase their percentages in all areas and are fully committed to e-ordering.

Have a conversation with VDAB about what the award has brought them and how they are now.

#Streamlining and Integration of Processes #E-Invoicing in the E-Procurement Cycle #Purchase/Procure to Pay (P2P)

The City of Antwerp won the e-FA-award in the ‘public organization in Flanders’ category because of its pioneering role and the good results that have been achieved for many years in the processing of both incoming and outgoing digital invoices.

The City of Antwerp already started using e-finance for the incoming invoicing of suppliers in 2016 and is making progress year after year.

In Q1 2021, the city processed 50% of 32,000 invoices from 700 different suppliers fully digitally. New suppliers report every day that they want to join the system.

Also for outgoing invoicing, 4000 customers have already connected digitally. The percentage varies between 10 and 30% per quarter, depending on the number of one-off invoices. 34 customers with the largest volume of invoices are definitively on board. The city is pursuing an active awareness-raising policy towards other customers. They can easily pay digitally via a QR code on the invoice and discover the user-friendliness and benefits themselves.

Wilfried Horemans and Winnie Brees talk about their experiences.

#Laws and Regulations     #Onboarding Customers and Suppliers

Tormax Belgium, market leader in automatic doors, is primarily an electric motor builder. Thanks to years of experience, they can automate doors in the most innovative ways.

Tormax sends e-invoices via Peppol, which fits seamlessly with their vision on automation and innovation. Moreover, Tormax plays a real ambassadorial role in the roll-out of e-invoicing in the B2B environment.

Get in contact with Véronique de Moor and get to know how the award impacted their business.

#Onboarding Customers and Suppliers     #Standards     #Streamlining and Integration of Processes

The progressive introduction of this new legal obligation creates an opportunity for both the enterprises and the contracting authorities. In order to maximize the chances that both parties benefit from this opportunity, a bit of support and coordination can make the difference. FPS BOSA is the expertise center in public procurement. Therefore it is ideally placed to help in this area. BOSA invites you to a guided tour of the no-nonsense supporting measures that it takes to help turning an obligation into an opportunity.

#Onboarding Customers and Suppliers #Laws and Regulations

Why should companies (besides sectoral standards for transactional data exchange) also work with cross-sector or even cross-border standards?

The aim of this session is to highlight the difference between sectoral and cross-sectoral standards, but also to discuss the benefits of a cross-sectoral standard. Besides the sectoral standards it is advisable to take into account with the cross-border standards.

The European Peppol framework was originally focused on the communication between different sectors in a cross-border environment towards governments. The initial B2G focus has been expanded towards B2B in the meantime. This expansion has great potential to streamline cross-sector transactional data exchanges and become the international standard for e-procurement.

#Standards     #Streamlining and integration of processes

To further stimulate the next step towards digitization of e-invoicing and because an enormous amount of work has already been done in recent years, the E-Invoicing Awards 2022 will be presented at this year’s E-Invoicing Conference. There are three categories:

• Businesses
• Intermediary actors e-invoicing
• Public and non-profit organisations

The awards are handed out by Jack Hamande, Pieter Timmermans and Bart Steukers.

Jack Hamande, Director General Digital Transformation, FOD BOSA
Pieter Timmermans, Managing Director ,VBO FEB
Bart Steukers, CEO, Agoria

#Streamlining and Integration of Processes #E-Invoicing in the E-procurement Cycle