Dutch enterprises massively embrace electronic invoicing

More and more Dutch companies prefer sending electronic invoices, instead of the paper invoice. Last year, another 15% of the Dutch companies switched to e-invoices. Measured as the steepest growth rate in one year, e-invoicing adoption in the Netherlands soared to an impressive 39%. This became clear after analysing the responses in a survey under almost 500 companies.

Invoice Monitor 2011
For the fourth consecutive year Dutch e-invoicing specialist Factuurwijzer, conducted the National Invoice Survey, focussing on e-invoicing, e-billing and other financial innovations. Based on the comments from almost 500 large and medium-sized enterprises, it became clear that in 2014 94% of Dutch based enterprises will use e-invoicing:

• 39% of companies already use electronic invoicing
• Another 34% expect to get started with e-invoicing within one year from now
• 21% of the companies said to schedule e-invoicing somewhere within 2012 and 2014

Comparative results
The results are in line with several other researches like the Dutch accounting survey by Twinfield and recent figures from the governmental body Statistics Netherlands. The result state 39% of the Dutch enterprises are using e-invoicing.

Beyond the tipping point
"It is fair to say that two years after e-invoicing liberalisation the Netherlands are now well beyond the e-invoicing tipping point”, says Friso de Jong Director of Factuurwijzer. He continues: "If we used this as a blueprint for European e-invoicing adoption, we could expect similar situations in other member states in or around 2015, two years after adopting the new EU directive."

Replacing the mailman or improving processes?
Both the Factuurmonitor as well as the other surveys show that companies of different sizes experience electronic invoicing in different ways:

• Freelancers and small companies focus on the use of PDF and email for e-invoicing. They experience e-invoicing as a way to replace the mailman with a low-cost alternative that allows to add a payment incentive, says 56%-68% of the respondents.
• (Medium) large companies and public authorities focus on sending and receiving (read: exchanging) electronic invoices that can be imported into their accounting software, improving process. 31%-35% of respondents experience e-invoicing in that way.

Trends
The survey also the respondents about their attitude towards adopting other financial innovations contactless mobile payment (NFC), SEPA, e-mandates, dynamic discounting and deployin social media. On average more than half of the respondents, medium-sized and large companies in Netherlands, were not aware of these innovations. And if they were, they were to focus on these innovation around the year 2014 or later.