Electronic invoicing is a useful first step in a company’s digital transformation, providing benefits and efficiencies to businesses by saving time and money on the numerous direct and indirect costs involved in invoice processing and managing invoices in both accounts receivable and payable sides. Electronic invoicing is being adopted in more and more countries, with many Latin American countries leading the way, and more recently also countries such as Saudi Arabia, India, and in Europe. In this webinar, Peter Lovelock, Director at Fair Tech Institute, Access Partnership, moderates a discussion with Lanee Cui-David, Deputy Commissioner of the Information Systems Group at the Bureau of Internal Revenue in the Philippines and Bill Xiao, Assistant Director at Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) in Singapore to learn more about the e-invoicing initiatives in these countries.

 

Lanee Cui-David discusses the e-invoicing initiative in the Philippines which was triggered by the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion Act of 2017. The Philippines favored the South Korean model of e-invoicing and with the help and assistance of the South Korean government, the program is now under development with a target date for a pilot to roll out to 100 taxpayers in January 2022.

 

Bill Xiao discusses the e-invoicing journey of Singapore which started in 2018 when the government was looking at digitalization of businesses and found a common theme to be the importance for businesses to share invoices between each other. Singapore favored Europe’s PEPPOL model and has adopted this framework. The country launched a nationwide e-invoicing network in 2019 and today there are more than 150 service providers serving more than 40,000 businesses, and the government is continuing to drive adoption.

 

Both panelists agree on the importance of learning from other countries that have implemented these systems by looking at success stories and challenges overcome, and to be clear on what the objectives are when embarking on an e-invoicing initiative.