New Zealand and Australia are continuing to help small businesses save time and money with e-Invoicing by establishing the Australia New Zealand Electronic Invoicing Board (ANZEIB), following an announcement made today by both Prime Ministers.
On Friday, Prime Ministers Scott Morrison and Jacinda Ardern established the ANZEIB to set the direction of how e-Invoicing will be rolled out over the next few years and help save businesses an estimated A$30 billion in transaction costs in the first 10 years.
The membership of the Board will be announced shortly, and the Board is likely to meet for the first time in March 2019.
The Prime Ministers’ announcement follows the recent Australia and New Zealand Productivity Commission’s joint report on Growing the digital economy in Australia and New Zealand: Maximising opportunities for SMEs, and intends to strengthen e-procurement practices, digital identity and company director identification.
The Prime Ministers also announced Australia and New Zealand’s intention to adopt the Pan-European Public Procurement Online (PEPPOL) interoperability framework for e-Invoicing to increase opportunities for our businesses to integrate with the global trading environment. PEPPOL is currently used across 32 countries in Europe, Asia and North America.
The Australian and New Zealand governments intend to finalise their membership of PEPPOL, and associated terms and conditions, by mid-2019. This will enable the transition to PEPPOL to take place by the end of the year, with businesses able to access the e-Invoicing framework from that time.
E-Invoicing will help business save time and money by allowing the direct exchange of invoices between suppliers’ and buyers’ financial systems.
Interoperable e-Invoicing will significantly improve productivity for businesses large and small, and reduce the costs of doing business for both government and industry.
The Morrison Government is working quickly to implement e-Invoicing, which will also support our policy of improving payment times to small business.
Further information on e-Invoicing can be found at: ato.gov.au/business/e-invoicing/