New Zealand welcomes Peppol
Early on 2019 the New Zealand and Australia Prime Ministers, Jacinda Ardern and Scott Morrison announced the adoption of Peppol (Pan-European Public Procurement Online) standard as the framework for electronic invoicing. The project should be finished by the end of 2019 with businesses being able to access the e-Invoicing network from that time.
This decision will enhance local business opportunities to participate in the trading environment beyond New Zealand and Australia through the standardization of communication protocols.
It’s been a hard road for both governments to implement e-invoicing, but it has finally been achieved.
Why is New Zealand choosing Peppol?
By joining PEPPOL, New Zealand and Australia are part of a framework used in over 33 countries and is spreading worldwide, boosting international trade, improving cash flow and lowering the risk of unpaid bills.
The PEPPOL standard provides other services in addition to the electronic invoice, such as e-ordering. This allows many countries to go one step further in the implementation and standardization of electronic invoicing. It would not be surprising if Australia and New Zealand also hosted these services to improve purchase-to-pay and order-to-cash processes.
MBIE: New Zealand’s Peppol Authority
In October 2019, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) became a Peppol Authority, with the responsibility of overseeing New Zealand’s e-Invoicing framework. Although New Zealand and Australia have separate PEPPOL Authorities, structures have been aligned to support one another. The effort to standardise invoicing processes has been a collaboration between the ATO, the MBIE, and the e-invoicing players.
PEPPOL Authorities are responsible for setting local requirements and managing participants of e-invoicing within its country.
MBIE’s responsibilities, as Peppol Authority include:
- Developing arrangements and requirements for the local environment.
- Overseeing the local implementation of the Peppol framework.
- On-boarding service providers – incl. due diligence and security checks, and testing.
- Monitoring service provider compliance.
- Providing tools and resources to support adoption.
New Zealand Governments will provide capabilities for any supplier to connect to an accredited Service Provider, like B2Brouter, giving them the possibility to set up of electronic invoices when trading with government agencies.
Why Kiwis should implement e-invoicing?
New Zealand businesses process more than 282 million invoices each year. New Zealand Business Number (NZBN) research shows: “the processing cost of an e-Invoice is estimated to be $7.63, while PDF invoices are estimated to cost $23.01 and paper invoices $25.67. Moving to e-Invoicing will result in an estimated saving of around $15 and $18. This could save New Zealand businesses up to $4.4 billion annually”.
The study continues claiming that “nearly 80% of all New Zealand businesses have been affected by late payments, with 28% of payments more than one month overdue”.
Peppol standards ensure that the information transmitted is correct and allow automation and digitization of obsolete manual processes. Thanks to this, the percentage of correctly processed invoices increase and their payment processes are speeded up, shortening late payments due times.
B2Brouter about to become a New Zealand certified Peppol Service Provider
We run a Certified Peppol Access Point in EU since 2011, therefore we’ve been actively involved in New Zealand’s journey to adopt OpenPeppol standard. B2Brouter is actually completing the latest test to be officially accredited as a certified e-Invoicing Service Provider by New Zealand Authorities.
B2Brouter is an online platform that offers electronic invoicing services, sending and receiving invoices, digitization and synchronization between business management systems. B2Brouter currently offers services to public and private companies, has more than 80,000 users and is available in 11 languages.
Our portal allows you to issue unlimited e-invoices thought Peppol for free. You’ll be able to reach all your business partners with a single solution (no matter which electronic invoice format they use).
You just have to register, create your company and client and start invoicing now!