Each year, Australian businesses process around 1.2 billion invoices.
Paper and email based invoicing is manually intensive and prone to human error resulting in increased processing costs and payment times for businesses. Electronic invoicing (or e-Invoicing) is the direct, electronic exchange of invoices between suppliers’ and buyers’ financial systems. e-Invoicing is a clear opportunity to streamline invoice transactions, saving businesses time and money.
e-Invoicing could result in benefits to the Australian economy of $28 billion over ten years, according to estimates by Deloitte Access Economics.
In March 2018, the Australian and New Zealand governments agreed to take practical action around common approaches to e-Invoicing under the Single Economic Market agenda (SEM). This was formalised on 25 October 2018 when the Australian Assistant Treasurer and the New Zealand Minister for Small Business signed the Trans-Tasman Electronic Invoicing Arrangement.
In February 2019 the Australian and New Zealand Prime Ministers announced that both countries intend to adopt the Pan-European Public Procurement Online (PEPPOL) interoperability framework for e-Invoicing to increase opportunities for our businesses to integrate with the global trading environment.
Further details and the latest information about e-Invoicing implementation is available at the Australian Taxation Office’s website.