Australia Chooses eInvoice Partners Ahead Of Standardization

Australia continues to make progress toward its eInvoice standardization initiative and has chosen its accredited partners to provide approved eInvoice services.

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is preparing to adopt the Pan-European Public Procurement On-Line (PEPPOL) eInvoice standards through the Australian PEPPOL Authority, which has chosen accredited eInvoice service providers to participate, according to AccountantsDaily reports on Tuesday (Dec. 31).

Approved service providers include MessageXchange, OZEDI Holdings, Storecove, Link4, Payreq and The Department of Human Services, with service providers chosen based on their ability to provide service metadata publisher (SMP) services as well as access point (AP) services.

An announcement on the ATO website explained that SMP service providers publish businesses’ capabilities in a standardized format, enabling a more efficient way of looking up where to send business documents for that company. AP service providers offer document transport and translation services, enabling companies to actually send and receive standardized eInvoices.

“The next implementation phase is the software developers actually using the access points — the Xeros, the MYOBs, to do that,” explained ATO Chief Digital Officer John Dardo in a previous interview with AccountantsDaily. “Once that happens, then I think we are in a position to say, ‘Hey, make sure your software can do digital invoicing.’ In most cases, a business shouldn’t have to do anything or an additional option will appear on the menu instead of fax, email or paper; there will be an option to send a digital invoice. It should be as simple as that.”

Last month, MassageXchange announced it had become the first PEPPOL-certified eInvoicing access point service provider in Australia and New Zealand.

Australia isn’t the only market embracing eInvoice standardization for consumers, businesses and governments in a bid to combat financial crime and boost efficiencies.

Also last month, the Egyptian government announced plans to adopt eInvoicing standardization for consumer tax payments, with plans to expand the initiative to government procurement operations. Other markets across Europe as well as the U.S. are in their own stages of eInvoice standardization efforts.