Posted by Link4 Team on 18/07/2018
It has become valuable for businesses to be more aware of the environmental impact their businesses are having. Three out of 4 Australian businesses believe that good waste management helps to improve public perception of their companies.
Paper invoicing is damaging the environment. We all know that public perception can have a strong impact on business decisions. This is why many businesses are becoming more environmentally aware, if not for the environment than the public perception. Even consumers are playing a part in this. As consumers become more aware of environmental concerns, they’re often choosing businesses that are vocal about their green practices.
“It takes 24 trees to produce 1 tonne of paper” – AustralianScience.com
Recycling and most importantly paper recycling is one of the easiest ways to create a green practice in a business. Considering that last year, 1.9 million tonnes of paper were sent to landfill and that it took 24 trees to produce 1 tonne of paper – the environmental impact of paper is staggering.
Recycling paper should become an integral process for any business and it does alleviate environmental pollution. However, reducing and removing as much paper usage from your business is the best way to help the environment.
In Australia, over 1 billion invoices are sent and received between businesses. That number of invoices increases dramatically when taking into Account B2C invoices.
PDF Invoices: A Good Start In Going Paperless
PDF invoices have survived in the digital world but there are costs associated with PDF invoicing that e-invoicing does not have. It was found that 3 out of 4 electronic invoices consisted of PDF invoices, while PDF invoicing doesn’t meet the true form of e-invoicing, but it does help to reduce paper waste.
PDF invoices still require staff overhead costs to process and confirm that the invoice data is correct. A large number of businesses will also print and physically store invoices which will require additional storage and printing costs.
We understand that businesses still use PDF invoicing which is why Link4 still provide PDF extraction software to meet a business’ current needs as well as give them a seamless way to transition to a fully automated process.
While larger organisations implement mandatory e-billing to remove the paper from their business processes. SMBs are trailing behind in improving this aspect. With the high number of invoices being sent and received by Australian businesses – only 10-15% of businesses have adopted e-invoicing.
Make Paper Invoicing A Thing Of The Past
Practices such as recycling and using PDF invoices have made their mark in helping the environment, however, alternatives exist that reduce the environmental impact even further.
With the implementation of the Interoperability Framework by the Digital Business Council, e-invoicing is beginning to gain strong support in Australia. The Australian Government are closely monitoring the implementation of the e-invoicing framework so that e-invoicing can easily become available to SMBs, enterprises and government departments.
The average office worker uses between 10,000 – 20,000 sheets of A4 paper each year. e-invoicing can completely remove the paper from the invoicing process. Invoice data is automatically extracted and converted into a readable format that is sent directly to your Cloud Accounting software.
Reducing paper waste is important and you can start by removing paper from your invoicing process.
Read more about the benefits of e-invoicing here.
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Want to help the environment? Sign up for e-invoicing today!
