How e-Invoicing Can Benefit Your Clients
When the Finnish importer of Volvo cars, Oy Volvo Auto Ab, decided to introduce e-invoicing, it was on the basis that its customers, the Volvo dealers, would also benefit from the new system. The solution significantly enhances the supply chain, since the invoices can be used to transfer product-specific documentation all the way to the end customer.
Volvo Auto sends two types of invoices to customers: vehicle invoices and invoices for equipment and spare parts. “We came to the conclusion that dealers would benefit most if a vehicle invoice contains all of the available specifications of the vehicle,” explains their CFO, Casimir Bäck.
In addition to price, the invoice contains information on the delivered car, such as its manufacturing number, order number, chassis model and number, key code, accessories, and colour.
“Those dealers who are equipped to receive web-based invoices now have the additional option to transfer this information from the invoice straight into their back office systems, even including the salesman’s pay records, if required,” says Bäck. For spare parts invoicing, when e-invoicing was introduced, the company moved from batch invoicing to order-based invoicing. This change also facilitated and speeded up the processing of invoices. Previously, if an error was found in one line of the batch invoice, the approval and payment of the entire invoice was delayed until the error was rectified.
At the time of embarking on the changeover to web-based invoicing, it was decided to standardise invoice messages, and a TeAppsXML-format invoice message was chosen. This is generated, together with the itemisation details, in Volvo Auto’s sales system.
Avain Vaunu Oy, a Volvo dealer operating in Eastern Finland, participated in the development of Web-based invoicing. “We were given the opportunity to express our own opinions about the information we would like to see in the invoice, and these were taken on board during the planning of the system,” explains finance manager Jaana Järvelä from Avain Vaunu Oy. “Electronic invoicing leads to big time savings and more smoothly run operations for a dealer,” Järvelä says.
In the morning, prior to the start of the working day, OpusCapita Invoice Management has already collected the invoices from Volvo Auto’s server, posted them to the accounts automatically, and transferred them to the appropriate approvals chain. The invoices are transferred over a data communication link between Volvo Auto and its dealers. Since no external operator is used, both parties save on costs. More help from automation can be expected when a dealer starts using the option of transferring each individual vehicle’s detailed information from the invoices to the company’s other systems.
However, according to Järvelä, this is still a development for the future. Those of Volvo Auto’s dealers who do not have OpusCapita Invoice Management software available receive the invoices as PDF file documents. A PDF invoice contains all the same detailed information as a web-based invoice, but the recipient has to transfer all information manually into its systems.
Approximately half of Volvo’s 14 dealers use the OpusCapita Invoice Management software. Volvo has a strong market position in the Nordic countries, with a 20% market share in Sweden and 7% in Finland. According to market research, Volvo is the most highly regarded car brand in Finland.
“Besides the brand’s good market position, we are proud also of our company’s status as Volvo’s longest established foreign subsidiary,” Bäck comments. Volvo was established in Sweden in 1927 and the Finnish subsidiary was set up the following year. Oy Volvo Auto Ab thus celebrates its 80th anniversary this year. Avain Vaunu and its parent company, Hämeen Autovaruste Oy, also share a long history with Volvo, as Hämeen Autovaruste has been selling Volvos since 1930.
Companies have already been taking advantage of the benefits of e-invoice handling for some time, by scanning paper invoices into their systems. Janne Suomalainen, the director of OpusCapita’s invoice management solutions, points out that the benefits of authentic e-invoices are much greater than those of electronic approval and the archiving of invoices. “For example, it pays for a company with operations in a number of different countries to introduce e-invoicing immediately in those market areas where development has progressed furthest,” he says.
According to Suomalainen, although the effort required for the implementation of an e-invoicing system is not great, the benefits are. “An authentic e-invoice enables automated workflow not only for the invoice itself but also throughout the order-delivery chain at both the sender’s and the recipient’s end. With e-invoices, the company can use its existing systems even more efficiently than before,” he says.
He adds: “This is also a question of improved competitive edge. The client case of Volvo Auto is a good example, not only of utilising the information on the e-invoice in operations, but of how partners can network in order to reap mutual efficiency gains through e-invoices.”