eInvoice Use Rises In Vietnam Ahead Of Mandate

In Vietnam, eInvoice use is on the rise: The number of firms in the country using eInvoices has skyrocketed from 800 in 2016 to more than 9,000 today. Overall, Vietnamese firms have created more than 600 million eInvoices, VietNamNews reported.

Even so, that number is relatively small compared to the more than a half a million companies in the country. While the country’s General Department of Taxation (GDT) currently allows companies to use either eInvoices or paper invoices, that will soon change: With the exception of small firms, all Vietnamese organizations will have to use eInvoices by 2019. Through the use of eInvoices, the GDT says companies can save time and money while reducing fraud and administrative work. In all, the agency estimated that firms could save about $44 million if they change over from paper invoices to eInvoices.

The news comes as the U.S. government readies for its own eInvoice mandate, meaning the 19 million invoices government agencies pay every year will have to be electronic by the end of fiscal year 2018. At present, about 12 million of those invoices (40 percent) are received in the form of paper.

In a “U.S. Adoption of Electronic Invoicing: Challenges and Opportunities” report released by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis in 2016, government officials noted the role eInvoicing plays in the broader effort to improve the U.S. payments system as outlined in its “Strategies for Improving the U.S. Payment System” report.

Analysis of the benefits of eInvoicing included in the report points to cost-savings, boosted efficiency and faster payments to suppliers, among other upsides.

“E-Invoicing is an important part of an efficient financial supply chain, optimizing the end-to-end process of B2B transactions, as it links the internal processes of enterprises to payment systems,” the Fed has stated. “As a result, eInvoicing is a vital component of the overall goal of making the end-to-end process (procure-to-pay and order-to-cash) more efficient.”