People are having confusion between electronic invoice and digital invoice. Yes it is true that both of the invoices are capable of processing electronic payments from the point of its creation, there is actually a big difference between the two. To give you an example, the e-invoice could be online bank, straight from seller’s invoicing system or perhaps, via web form. Then, the file can be downloaded or, it can be sent straight to the buyer’s software.
The e-invoice would be delivered by the e-invoicing operator in which the operator may be compared to the postal system when sending paper invoices. On the other hand, if you’re using invoicing software, there’s no need to separately open the software used by the operator. Every recipient of the e-invoice has e-invoicing address of their own. By using e-invoicing, it can help in eliminating unnecessary steps such as accuracy check, manual data entry as well as swapping of software.
Electronic invoice is basically a structured data that comes in formats of EDI or XML that’s created by the invoicing software and it would not be considered as one if for example that the format is in Word, Excel or PDF, if it is scanned or if the documents were processed using optical character recognition.
Whether you believe it or not, there are numerous benefits that e-invoice brings and some are discussed below.
Number 1. Save time – much of the unnecessary steps will be taken out as you use e-invoice; this lets you and your customers to save time too.
Number 2. Reduce costs – through paperless invoicing, there’s no need to pay for postal or paper fees. Not only that, given that you are saving time using the e-invoice than emailing PDFs and using templates, the time you saved may be used on more important tasks.
Number 3. Reduce mistakes – any typos and mistakes are reduced since there are no manual input and more on automation. So there is no need to worry that your invoice will be lost in mail.
Number 4. Offer better customer service – it’s more convenient actually for customers to receive electronic invoice to their chosen platform. Based on studies as well, receiving invoice than the conventional invoices can save up to 90 percent on the processing cost. Furthermore, customers can make the most of early payment discounts by just having shorter delivery time.
Number 5. Be paid faster – using electronic invoice, it is demanding less time and effort for your customers to pay. Believe it or not, this makes them pay faster.