E-invoices provide a simpler and safer business.
This is what the Swedish Companies Registration Office emphasizes in a newly written article. The Swedish Companies Registration Office is one of three government agencies that want it to be mandatory for companies and public administration to use e-invoices.
The simple explanation behind the wish is that e-invoices benefit the country's business life and accelerate digital development in Sweden.
"Reduced costs and safer handling". It's a claim you can find in several places on this website. At InExchange, we know that e-invoicing is the best way to invoice. But there are others who want to accelerate the spread of e-invoicing.
Bolagsverket explains, in an article published a few weeks ago, that the financial information that arises from business transactions needs to be better utilized. The e-invoice provides that opportunity.
Annika Stenberg, Director General of the Swedish Companies Registration Office, says this:
- With increased use of e-invoices, we make financial information more accessible and useful in society, which, among other things, helps to create new opportunities for innovation and growth. But the best thing is that it leads to a simpler and safer entrepreneurial life where our small and medium-sized Nordic companies can spend less time on administration, control and reporting and instead can focus more on what they want - running and developing their business.
The intensified interest in electronic invoicing is no coincidence. The Swedish Companies Registration Office, together with the Swedish Tax Agency and DIGG (the Swedish Agency for Digital Government), are currently conducting an offensive in the area and want to put the issue in focus. In fact, these three authorities have approached the government with a petition. The petition calls on the Moderate-led government to implement the proposal to appoint an investigator to examine the possibilities of making it mandatory for companies and public administration to use e-invoices.
The petition was addressed to the government a month ago. The authorities write that the investigation should start as soon as possible.
One strong reason for the urgency is the initiatives taken within the EU and also at Nordic level. In its work to revise the VAT Directive, the European Commission has flagged mandatory e-invoicing for cross-border trade between Member States. At the same time, the Nordic Smart Government & Business (NSG&B) cooperation programme has pointed out the direction of travel in our part of Europe and emphasized that digitization creates a simpler and safer business.
- Increasing the use of e-invoices by companies is a central and crucial sub-goal in the Nordic roadmap, explains Henrik Werner, business developer at the Swedish Companies Registration Office, in the same article as Annika Stenberg's statement.
Simon Strandell, Head of Sales at InExchange, recently described in a high-profile opinion piece the dilemma of our domestic invoicing being fragmented into so many individual solutions. When suppliers charge for their products or services, they are often forced to adapt to specific invoicing terms tailored to the particular customer - but hardly to anyone else.
A standard digital solution would make things much easier.
Henrik Werner, at the Swedish Companies Registration Office, also points out how the current fragmentation is hampering digital development in our country.
"We need to create a coherent value chain that provides companies with good support in their business processes and daily operations," he says in the Swedish Companies Registration Office's article.
The Swedish Companies Agency's press release:
E-invoices - a simpler and safer everyday life for entrepreneurs
Article on the request to the government:
Authorities want to see mandatory e-invoices
Simon Strandell's opinion piece:
No to e-invoices is a no to digital growth