Exclusive: EU working on new standard to promote paperless invoicing

The European Commission (EC) is planning to put forward a number of proposals next year designed to make it easier for firms to ditch paper-based invoices in favour of online e-invoicing systems designed to slash administrative costs and cut carbon emissions.

Commission studies have previously calculated that the adoption of e-invoicing systems could save European businesses billions of dollars through enhanced productivity and reduction in paper, printing and delivery costs.

Advocates of the approach also claim that it would deliver huge environmental savings, cutting carbon emissions associated with paper production and postal deliveries.

However, adoption of e-invoicing technologies has been hampered by legal systems that can require firms to keep hard copies of invoices and variations in tax and payment rules across different countries.

The EC is now seeking to remove some of these barriers to adoption and has formed an Expert Group that has been tasked with advising on how rules relating to e-invoicing could be simplified.

A source familiar with the working group said that it was investigating the prospect of developing EU-wide standards for handling e-invoices and legislative proposals that would make it easier for small and medium sized business in particular to transact electronically.

He added that the EC was hoping to finalise its proposals later this year.

"Depending on which analyst you believe, there are somewhere in the region of 30 billion paper invoices delivered each year," the source said. "Replace even a relatively small proportion of those with online invoices and you can still have an enormous environmental impact."