November 2015
Featured in this insight: Central government & non-department public bodies, IT & telecommunications, Local & regional government
Local government considering e-invoicing, survey finds: A recent survey by iGov, an organisation which provides critical professional and IT support services to the government, has revealed that 39 per cent of local councils are considering investing in e-invoicing in the next year.
The iGov survey was conducted on behalf of Basware UK, Local Government Association, the Department of Business Innovation and Skills and the UK National e-Invoicing Forum.
The survey revealed that nearly three quarters (74 per cent) of those working in the public sector feel that e-invoicing increases the likelihood of timely payments. As well as this, 61 per cent of public sector employees believe that e-invoicing increases the visibility of the workflow process. A further 44 per cent said that they think investing in e-invoicing will enhance relationships with suppliers.
The survey also revealed that the method most commonly used to invoice within local government is sending a PDF over email. This method is used by 63 per cent of local authorities.
Sending invoices as PDFs over email is a manual process which requires printing and scanning, whereas with e-invoicing, this is removed.
The central government has made attempts to get councils to use e-invoicing in the form of the Prompt Payment Code and the Enterprise Bill, however, 40 per cent of local authorities said that they had a lack of resource which stopped them from adopting the system.
VP Network Services and UK MD at Basware, Amabel Grant, said of the research findings:
“The public sector is starting to address late payments culture and move towards paperless systems but more needs to be done to help them become fully electronic. There is a perception in the public sector that e-invoicing is costly and difficult to implement. It is clear that the sector wishes to implement e-invoicing and punitive measures around late payment have provided a more compelling reason to do so.”
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