We all know where we are heading

Bo, I am sure you are correct in pushing for e-invoicing to be promoted better - and faster - by governments and companies. Where it runs into resistance is from those international companies that continue to take advantage of the inefficient way VAT is collected within the EU. If we could get greater concentration on moving to real time, automated settlement within the transaction flow - with high costs for those not moving to this format - then e-invoicing would get a shot in the arm.

My other comment is that we should aim to see e-invoicing as a part of the solution to the BEPS targets of the G20/ OECD for later this year. The clearer we can track the flow, the sooner we can eradicate the tax evasion. To this end, working with LDC governments is very important - and can get better responses than just in the EU.

We are focusing on automation of VAT-reporting. A move to real time payments is another aspect - and that has to be an EU-wide move for obvious reasons and enterprises should be compensated for the loss of interestfree financing this would be.

Reading about "No Invoice Policy" brought back the old memory of reading about support for the related "Evaluated Receipts Settlement" feature in a leading ERP in the late '90s. At the time, I was stunned about how technology could be used to cut costs, increase accuracy and all those nice things. I continue to be stunned now, but about why ERS hasn't quite taken the world by storm yet. Although there might be a few early adapters of ERS, I've come across just one company - a Top 5 USA Bank - to have implemented ERS in these 15 years. Goes to show why, on certain things like business processes, people tend to overestimate the amount of change even in 10 years.