Motivated by the need to improve its fiscal controls, to reduce the fraud and to accelerate the collection of its taxes, the Italian government has mandated since January 2019 the use of electronic invoicing for all business-to-business transactions, even for small amounts. The invoice must be produced as a XML file and respect the specifications of the national format. It is then sent to the central platform of the Tax Authority (called SDI), which validates the invoice and forwards it to the final recipient. The Italian e-invoicing system is based upon the European Directive 2014/55/EU which organizes the electronic invoicing across the whole European Union, initially with a focus on public procurement. Italy’s pioneering of the solution for all B2B invoices serves also as a case study to other countries.

GetYourBill is an innovative solution for the issuing of e-invoices and e-receipts, instantly and without errors, directly at the shop, in mobility or for ecommerce. It works as a gateway, which is connected on one side to the merchant (through his cash register, his payment terminal or his webshop) and on the other side to the SDI platform of the Tax Authority, through various certified intermediaries. In addition, GetYourBill is also connected to a number of certified databases from which it retrieves in real time information necessary to ensure that the invoices can be created rapidly and correctly.

“The last few years have been critical and the entry into force of the e-invoicing regulation has provided a great push - explains Nicolas Ancot, one of the three Board Directors - in fact, since 2019 the Italian law requires that all invoices be electronic and since April this year that is also the case for the receipts. These changes have caused major difficulties to retailers and small entrepreneurs and GetYourBill is the solution that removes the complexity they were facing. Italy is the first market to move in this direction and the know-how that we are developing will be extremely useful when other markets follow in its footsteps.”

A few figures. The company’s turnover has grown from € 118.000 in 2017 to a forecasted € 2 million in 2021. Ultroneo manages over 10 million documents annually, counts more than 10.000 active merchants across the country and 500.000 different invoicees have received at least one invoice issued through GetYourBill. Notwithstanding the difficult period of the lockdown, the success has arrived precisely in 2019 and 2020: +62% compared to the 2018 turnover and +235% of active merchants.

The essence of the innovation sits mainly in the speed : after the merchant keys in the VAT number of his client, the software retrieves in a couple of seconds the other data required to complete the invoice (mainly company name and address) thanks to its algorithm and the access to various certified databases. The time for issuing an invoice is less than 30 seconds, compared to at least 3 minutes with any other solution. GetYourBill then transfers automatically the invoice to the Tax Authority’s platform and stores it according to the legal requirements. It even has an algorithm to automatically correct and resend invoices rejected by the Tax Authority. GetYourBill is integrated with the most common checkout devices : cash register, payment terminal or webshop platforms.

“We started as a small startup, but we always believed in our vision. We have now become a more mature company, driven by a team of experts from various backgrounds. We have benefitted of local seed investment and of important commercial and technical partnerships. Even though we are satisfied with what we have achieved so far, this is only a milestone : our objective now is to export our know-how”, adds Nicolas.