E-invoicing is the process of creating and providing sales invoices in an electronic format, helping the electronic data interchange between the IT systems of a supplier and a buyer. Help provide structured data, such as an XML or JSON file, an e-invoice allows the recipient to automatically import the invoice data into their accounting or ERP system. These structured files are difficult for humans to read.
E-invoicing helps all businesses around the globe as the invoicing process becomes much faster, more reliable, and more efficient. E-invoices do not get lost, there is no need for paper-based sending and storage.
Human readable PDF files can only work as e-invoices if they include the data embedded into them in a structured format such as XML so that the business applications can interpret and process these. The best example is the combined PDF/A-3 format.
Governments around the world are requesting the use of e-invoicing for business activities. Increasingly, e-invoicing includes live tax reporting to tax authorities.
Businesses should adopt e-invoicing to stay compliant and to continue trading in countries where e-invoicing is mandated, to \enable their compliance in countries where they plan to begin trading and to benefit from automated AP/AR processes as a part of a wider digital transformation strategy.
To stay competitive, it’s best to start implementing an e-invoicing solution when you discover a provider that aligns with your long-term e-invoicing needs.
Know your government’s e-invoicing requirements and prepare ahead to help ensure your operations remain seamless and in compliance with regulatory requirements and that you can respond to market demand early as more and more businesses start to use e-invoicing.
In some countries, depending on the local legal requirements, the base capabilities of Epicor Financials need additional features to help customers remain compliant. The Country Specific Functionality (CSF) packages in Epicor Financials enable access to different functionalities required by law, a specific industry, or a widely used local process. Most of the capabilities available in CSF packages are related to financials. The CSF packages are developed, tested, and released with each Epicor Financials release, design to have a seamless experience for any users in the given country.
The CSF packages can be purchased separately for each country, containing detailed documentation on the configuration of the add-on functionality included. Typically, CSF packages also contain locally required human-readable reports, electronic reports, declarations, statements, electronic invoicing solutions, payment instruments, access to third-party interfaces, tax handling logics, forms, validation, or certification routines.
These packages allow your business to grow and expand into new geographies without purchasing additional third-party software, saving you precious time and costs when starting new practices.
Epicor Financials CSF packages are maintained by Epicor and patches are issued more frequently between the two annual major releases of Epicor Financials, based on the urgency.
Instead of customers looking at third-party applications and building out the integrations and maintaining these individually, Epicor offers a new e-invoicing solution along the relevant country CSF packages.
Avalara is a global cloud-based tax compliance and automation company that has been a market leader in tax management, providing quick and easy ways to manage sales and use taxes, achieve compliance, reduce risk, helps provide tax reporting, and streamline processes for businesses of all sizes.
Avalara has been a long-time ISV partner of Epicor. The Epicor Tax Connect product has been used by many North American customers on multiple platforms for sales tax, use tax compliance, reporting, and tax exempt certificate management.
Avalara enables a new global service on e-invoicing, now available to Epicor customers in multiple countries.
The Avalara E-Invoicing and Live Reporting is a SaaS, einvoicing, cross-platform solution that can simplify compliance processes for companies operating internationally.
It can be integrated into business systems via a single Application Programming Interface (API) and is designed to adhere to evolving e-invoicing and live tax reporting requirements in 60+ countries around the globe. This enables businesses to exchange e-invoices and report data in real-time via tax authorities’ platforms and other exchange networks.
The Avalara invoicing supports:
The Avalara-powered solution helps you establish a robust e-invoicing process directly in Epicor Financials.
The Avalara E-Invoicing and Live Reporting solution is only available in Saudi Arabia, Australia, and New Zealand.