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Global Governments have recently been taking a favorable look at Electronic Invoicing.  Among those World Treasury Departments include the USA, Greece and Australia.  The United States and Greece have mandated the E-invoice processing solution.

“Electronic Invoicing will mean lower costs for taxpayers and faster payments for private sector companies doing business with the federal government,” said Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Neal Wolin.

The US Treasury and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) created the Office of Financial Innovation and Transformation (FIT) within Treasury’s Fiscal Service.  FIT’s mission is to serve as a catalyst in deploying solutions to improve data quality and operational efficiency.  Deploying a shared solution for the paperless capture of vendor data is one of FIT’s first priorities

Today, Wide-Area Workflow the Department of Defense solution, is used by over 92,000 vendors submitting over 7 million invoices annually and saving taxpayers over $250,000 annually.

A few weeks ago the Greek Government announced an Electronic Invoicing Initiative of their own.  Planned savings is over 3.0 Billion Euros by government and over 1.0 Billion Euros savings by business.

The Greek Development,  Competiveness and Shipping Minister Mihalis Chrysohoidis said” both the state and enterprises were losing more than 4.0 billion euros annually from illegal invoicing practices and noted that Electronic Invoicing will effectively combat such practices.”

The goal is to have financial transactions between public sector and businesses exclusively electronic by the first quarter of 2012.

Electronic Invoicing is used today but in very limited areas.  The plan is to improve administrative and financial burdens that have been upon government and enterprise.  He noted that the cost of each invoice that is issued on paper is about 7-15 euros while an e-invoice costs about .60-.40 euros.

This week the Australian Federal Government was urged to investigate the possibility of mandatory E-invoiving.  It was advised that by doing so would help to avoid a carbon tax bill of up to $24 Million a year.

The recommendation said “the Government should increase the automation of services  – Automate processes to improve the interactions between people, business and government.”

A department spokesman said the Government was “always open to considering the adoption of new technologies, such as Electronic Invoicing, where it improves productivity and efficiency.”

With this initiative it could save the Australian Government from $8-$20 an invoice.

The Timing Couldn’t be Better for Global Governments to examine the possibilities of Electronic Invoicing.  The USA and Greece have now mandated E-invoicing into their agenda,  other world organizations like Australia will follow and find out how dynamic E-invoicing really is.