Electronic invoice (e-Invoice) is an invoice that was issued, transferred, and received in a structured data format that allows automatic processing. A structured electronic invoice contains seller's data in the machine-readable format that can be automatically imported into the buyer's settlement system without the need for manual data entry.

The usual paper documents have a lot of disadvantages and gradually has been forced out of business practices because of their inefficiency and high maintenance cost. This is especially evident in foreign trade activity when the cost of invoice processing can reach tens or even hundreds of euros.

Paper invoices have been replaced by their scanned copies that are transmitted by means of electronic communication. It has allowed to solve part of the problems, but not all. These invoices were poorly recognised by both counterparties and inspecting authorities and were used as additional information to the paper originals.

Preparation of the invoices in the form of PDF documents and signing them with an electronic digital signature or an authorized electronic signature (EDS/AES) has partially improved the situation. But the problems from entering data from these invoices to the information systems of parties to a transaction, errors in filling and processing has been remained.

In a number of industries, internal standards for the transmission invoices in machine-readable format have begun to emerge, including their use of instruments such as EDI. However, the technical complexity of their implementation, the lack of unified generally recognized standards for the format, structure, transmission protocols and visualization of invoices haven't allowed these solutions to extend beyond a number of specific industries.

The emergence of international standards (EN 16931, UBL, UN / CEFACT CII) has enabled to implement a mechanism that does not depend on the specific specifics of the seller or buyer. Once connected to the e-invoicing system, you could be able to receive and accept invoices from any member of this system both within the country and abroad.

Thanks to use of the unified standards, electronic invoices has became not only comprehensible and recognised by all participants of the supply chain. They also allow to automat the settlement procedure itself. The use of the schematron technology allow excluding transmission of incorrect or non-compliant with local requirements documents, critically reduces the labor costs for invoice processing payment documents and their maintenance cost within the framework of a business transaction.

The advantages of replacing paper invoices with electronic ones can be achieved in two stages.

Replacement of paper forms for a structured digital forms allows to process and archive invoices more effectively. It provides significant savings on printing, postage, in-office routing and archiving.

By making the data machine-readable, there is no need to manually view and read the visual invoice form. It also eliminates the manual work of entering the invoice information in the system of access point . It provides significant savings in human resources and significantly reduces the number of data entry errors. This cannot be achieved with digital images of an invoice such as pdf.

In Ukraine
According to the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU, the European Directive on Electronic Invoicing (eInvoicing, 2014/55/EU) must be implemented in Ukraine before 01/01/2024.

eDelivery - an infrastructure for message delivery that provides technical specifications and standards, installed software and support services that enables for projects to develop a network of nodes for secure digital data exchange.

With eDelivery, the government authorities and private organisations from different sectors of the economy and countries can easily create a secure and interoperable channel for the transmission of electronic documents and data among themselves using the public or private data network.

The solution is based on the AS4 messaging standards (Applicability Statement 4) which is recognised by ISO as an international standard and were included in the latest version of ISO 15000 (Electronic business eXtensible Markup Language (ebXML)).

PEPPOL provides an opportunity for trading partners to exchange of standard-based electronic documents via the PEPPOL network (on the base of quadrangular model). These documents include electronic orders, electronic advance consignment notes, electronic invoices, electronic catalogues, responses on the level of messages, etc.

PEPPOL Access Points connect the users to PEPPOL network and exchange of electronic documents in accordance with PEPPOL specifications.Buyers and suppliers can freely select their preferred provider of the access point for the connection to all PEPPOL members that have already been connected to the network. ("Connect once, connect to all").

In Ukraine
Ukraine joined the PEPPOL network at the level of the Ministry of Digital Transformation.
An access point was deployed as part of the DIA project. PPL 33-35 LLC is also a member of this network PEPPOL.

The pilot project
The process of exchanging electronic invoices between Ukraine and the EU (Lithuania) has been implemented in both directions.