DHL has begun a shift to electronic from paper invoicing in 13 European countries in order to speedup its accounting process and save administration costs for customers and its own offices.
The Deutsche Post subsidiary has forged a partnership with Accountis, the electronic paymentand accounting system provider, to switch to “e-invoicing” throughout the European region, aftersuccessful trials in Belgium and Switzerland.
“Printing, posting, delivering and managing many bulky, complex paper invoices each month wasan expensive and time-consuming process, not only for us but for our customers as well, who were aprimary driving force behind the implementation of our e-invoicing application,” explained BrianThumwood, DHL’s e-billing programme manager.
Using a DHL-branded e-invoicing portal, the company’s finance team can now generate, send andmanage invoices from one secure location. All new and archived e-invoice data is available 24/7from any location and customised workflow functions ensure that business processes and dataflowsare streamlined and audited.
Instead of receiving bulky complex paper invoices, DHL customers should receive theirinvoices as digitally signed PDFs, or be able to view them online by accessing a secure DHL-brandedcustomer portal.
DHL’s key criteria when looking for an e-invoicing system were that it should be proven,compatible and allow the management of VAT-compliant and multilingual e-invoices, said Thumwood. “Accountis blew us away with their enthusiasm, technical ability and experience,” he added.
All DHL’s paper invoices from 13 European countries will now be generated and deliveredelectronically, resulting in a faster and cost-effective process, DHL says.
“Those customers that already have access to the system are finding it very easy to use,which proves to us that the project has already been a success,” Thumwood said.
