In today’s digital age, it’s essential for organisations – particularly government agencies – to have an efficient and secure e-invoicing system in place. However, it can be challenging to know which solution will meet the specific needs of your entity. This article aims to explore the differences between LinkFor’s Interim and fully Integrated e-invoicing solutions and examine which might be the most suitable for your government agency.
The Quick Fix for e-invoicing: Why Choose the Interim Solution
The Interim solution provides a quick and easy way to capture e-invoices sent to your entity and convert them to PDFs, which can then be imported through your current manual process. This option is ideal for organisations that are not yet ready to invest in a fully automated system but need to meet government mandates requiring them to accept e-invoices.
What are the pluses?
- It meets current government requirements for e-invoicing, ensuring your organisation is compliant with the regulations.
- It provides a more secure way to receive invoices from suppliers, compared to an email with a PDF attachment. Emails are not secure and run the risk of being exposed to email attacks and scams. The Interim solution offers a safer method of transferring data, keeping your organisation and suppliers secure from fraudulent activities.
The Power of Automation: Why upgrade to the Integrated Solution
With the Integrated solution (a.k.a. LinkFor E-invoicing), the system works in harmony with your ERP system to deliver data precisely where it needs to go. In addition, it provides a more seamless and automated option for processing invoices.
What are its leading benefits?
- It allows for a faster and safer e-invoicing set-up.
- It enables activation of business rules and validations to ensure invoices received from suppliers include all information necessary for automated processing.
- It enables both sending and receiving e-invoices, allowing you to manage all of your invoicing needs in one place.
- It provides greater accuracy, reducing the likelihood of errors and inconsistencies that can arise when converting PDFs to and from other formats.
- It elevates efficiency – theautomated solution eliminates the need for manual processes and encourages optimal team productivity, resulting from reduced time usage.
Choosing to upgrade from the Interim solution to the Integrated solution can provide significant cost savings for your organisation over time.
Making the Right Choice: What’s the Optimal Solution for Your Organisation
When considering which solution to adopt, the main factors to consider are your organisation’s needs, budget and level of automation. The Interim solution may be ideal for government departments that are looking to meet a mandate and need a quick solution that can fit within their narrow budget frame. But, keep in mind that this is a temporary fix. An interim offering.
It’s also worth noting that some organisations have implemented interim solutions due to ongoing upgrades of their ERP systems. However, we recommend that organisations should not wait until the completion of the upgrade project to begin planning for e-invoicing integration – it’s better to have both projects running in parallel.
On the other hand, the Integrated solution is the best option for government departments that require a fully automated and seamless invoicing process, providing greater accuracy and efficiency.
Conversion from an Interim to an Integration Solution
It’s crucial to keep in mind that Interim and Integration solutions are two separate e-invoicing services. To convert from the Interim to the Integrated solution, a detailed planning process is required. This involves discussing your organisation’s e-invoicing needs, such as sending or receiving invoices or both, business rules and validations, and sending responses back to suppliers.
The implementation phase of an Integrated solution includes software configuration, testing, and training. The benefits of a fully automated system can be significant, making it an easy-to-use and efficient service for everyone within the organisation.
In summary, LinkFor offers two solutions to comply with e-invoicing mandates and improve invoice processing: the Interim and Integrated (LinkFor E-invoicing) solutions. While both provide enhanced benefits, the latter offers seamless integration, automated data entry, increased efficiency, and improved accuracy, making it the superior choice!
LinkFor’s team works closely with clients to implement and train them on their chosen solution, with the Integration solution being the recommended choice for maximising e-invoicing benefits.
