Electronic invoicing (e-invoicing)

More and more Australian small businesses are replacing paper invoicing with electronic invoicing (also called e-invoicing) for business-to-business and government transactions.

How does e-invoicing work?

E-invoicing allows businesses to exchange invoices directly between accounting systems on a secure network. It differs from just sending an invoice by email. You can both send and receive invoices via e-invoicing if you have the right software and your creditor or debtor is registered for e-invoicing.

All federal government agencies need to transition to e-invoicing by 1 July 2022. State government agencies are also progressively converting to e-invoicing. For example, New South Wales government agencies must switch by 1 January 2022.

The benefits of e-invoicing

There are several benefits of going digital via e-invoicing, including:

• reducing the postage and handling costs of sending paper invoices.

• speed of delivery to creditors (instantly, versus the inevitable ‘snail mail’ delay).

• increased security/less risk of fraud (as e-invoices are sent via a secure computer network)

• faster payment times (as the invoice is automatically entered into the receiver’s accounting system ready to be approved).

• reduced data entry errors (as invoicing information is automatically extracted from accounting systems).

Does accounting/bookkeeping software have e-invoicing capabilities?

Accounting/bookkeeping software providers like Xero have e-invoicing functionality as a standard feature. Xero software can exchange e-invoices with both Xero and non-Xero accounting/bookkeeping software.

How we can help

If you want to make managing your business finances easier, our team at Scorpion Bookkeeping can help. We provide cost-effective bookkeeping support services to a diverse range of clients in South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria.

And if you’d like to implement cloud-based Xero bookkeeping software, we can help you with that as well. We are a Xero-certified partner.

Contact us today for a free, no-obligation consultation to find out how we can help your business!