Mandatory electronic invoicing between companies

How it works and what benefits it will bring to companies

Since the approval in Congress on September 15, 2022 of the Crea y Crece Law of companies and its publication in the BOE, the foundations of the obligation to invoice electronically by all companies and self-employed workers, for the sale of their products and services, have been laid.

The main objective of this Law from the perspective of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation is the control of delinquency and payment terms between companies to facilitate their growth. Although as a secondary objective and no less important for the Ministry, is the digitalization of horizontal processes of all companies, such as invoice accounting and payment automation.

“Create and Grow” Law for Companies

Delving into the Law, there are certain aspects that we want to highlight:

— First, this new Law implies that the current PDF signed or not electronically, will cease to be valid as soon as this Law enters into force.

— Interoperability between private platforms that cover the obligation so that a single platform can be sent and received to any other platform.

— Multiple formats are supported in which all commercial information that already exists in current formats, such as FacturaE, EdiFact, Peppol, CII or UBL, among others, will be valid.

Interconnection between all platforms, without the possibility of denying interconnection between them or charging undertakings for it.

— All the information of each platform must be public so that the rest of the platforms can connect with all the information that companies need for the optimization of their processes.

— And finally, the obligation to communicate the statements of the invoice and the need to report the actual payment of each invoice is introduced.

In summary, this Law seeks to improve the control of the turnover of Spanish companies and reduce delinquency and improve payment terms, while promoting the digitalization and productivity of commercial relations. And all companies must adapt their systems to the technical requirements established by the Law to be able to issue and receive invoices in electronic format.

Benefits of electronic invoicing for companies

Electronic invoicing should not be seen as just another obligation, since it offers numerous benefits for the daily operations of companies, such as:

  • Optimization of business relationships.
  • Reduction of time and costs in administrative processes.
  • Increased productivity.
  • Greater security and reliability of intercompany transactions.
  • Reduction of delinquency and reduction of payment terms in commercial operations.
  • Increased traceability and control of payments between companies and freelancers.
  • Reduction of human errors.

When and how to implement this electronic solution

As for how this new invoice format should be implemented, the Law Creates and Growth of companies establishes 6 months to develop its regulation, so, since it was approved in September, it is expected to be developed and approved in the spring of 2023. This will mean that for companies of more than 8 million euros it will be mandatory in the first of 2024 and for companies with turnover less than that amount and for the self-employed it will be mandatory in 2025.

Implementation of electronic invoicing with Orbita Cloud

ORBITA has extensive experience in electronic data interchange solutions such as electronic invoicing. The most interesting thing about Orbita is that it not only includes the issuance and receipt of invoices, but we take it a step further to use this format in order to automate the accounts payable (P2P – Procure to Pay) process. In this way, efficiencies in a company can achieve 80% savings in validation and reconciliation time of invoices, their accounting and the generation of payment orders automatically.

The global implementation of electronic invoicing is already a very close reality, both nationally and internationally. And Orbita is a global and comprehensive solution, which turns this next obligation into a competitive advantage thanks to significant cost reduction