What happens after you switch eInvoicing on? A practical optimisation checklist

Going live with eInvoicing is an important milestone, but it is not the finish line. Once invoices are flowing through Peppol, the next step is to make sure the process is actually delivering the improvements you expected – and to keep refining it as supplier behaviour, systems and business requirements change.

That matters in Australia and New Zealand, where eInvoicing is becoming more embedded in everyday procurement and finance processes. In New Zealand, mandated government agencies are now expected to pay 95% of eInvoices within five business days. In Australia, the ATO continues to support the Peppol framework and certified eInvoicing products. The direction is clear: simply being connected is no longer the only measure of success.

1. Check how much of your invoice volume is actually using eInvoicing

Start with adoption. Being able to receive or send an eInvoice does not necessarily mean your trading partners are using the capability consistently.

Review your invoice mix and ask:

• Are new trading partners being directed to eInvoicing as part of business-as-usual onboarding?
• Are there particular business units or supplier groups where adoption is lagging?

This gives you a clear picture of where the next onboarding effort should go. The more invoice volume you move to a consistent electronic process, the easier it is to reduce parallel manual workflows.

2. Review exceptions, not just successful invoices

A healthy eInvoicing process is not one with zero exceptions. It is one where exceptions are visible, understandable and dealt with quickly.

Look at invoices that are rejected, delayed or sent for manual review. Common causes can include missing purchase order numbers, incorrect references, unexpected values or information landing in a field your downstream system does not use as expected.

Then look for patterns. If the same supplier or the same type of invoice is repeatedly creating work for your team, that is an optimisation opportunity. You may be able to tighten a business rule, improve supplier instructions or adjust your internal mapping rather than continuing to fix the same issue manually.

3. Make sure eInvoicing connects to the rest of your accounts payable workflow

Getting an invoice into your finance system faster only creates part of the benefit. What happens next matters just as much.

Review whether eInvoice data is helping you automate steps such as:

• matching invoices to purchase orders and goods receipts
• routing invoices to the right approver
• checking supplier and invoice information against your business rules
• managing approval thresholds and exceptions
• preparing invoices for payment and reconciliation.

The ATO notes that Peppol supports a broader set of procure-to-pay documents, including orders, order responses and invoice responses. That means an eInvoicing implementation can become a foundation for wider procurement automation, rather than an isolated finance project.

4. Keep supplier onboarding running after go-live

Supplier onboarding should not end when the project team closes the implementation plan. Suppliers change systems, new suppliers are added and contacts move on.

Build eInvoicing into your normal supplier management process. Make it clear in onboarding packs, procurement communications and invoice instructions that eInvoicing is the preferred channel. Periodically identify suppliers that are capable of eInvoicing but are still sending PDFs, then target them with practical support.

A smaller, ongoing onboarding program is often easier to sustain than a one-off campaign followed by silence.

5. Measure whether the process is improving

Your optimisation plan needs a few simple measures so you can see whether the changes are working. Useful measures can include:

• percentage of invoices sent or received through Peppol
• average invoice processing time
• invoice exception or rejection rate
• manual touchpoints per invoice
• cost per invoice processed
• payment cycle time.

You do not need a complicated dashboard to get started. Choose the measures that relate to your original goals and review them regularly. If eInvoicing adoption is rising but processing time is not improving, for example, that can point to a bottleneck further downstream.

6. Check what has changed in your systems and business rules

ERP upgrades, new approval workflows, new entities and changes to procurement rules can all affect an eInvoicing setup that was working well at go-live.

Include eInvoicing in change management and testing whenever you make material changes to finance or procurement systems. Confirm that mappings still work, required data is reaching the right fields, validation rules are still appropriate and the right teams are receiving alerts when something needs attention.

7. Turn the review into a regular optimisation cycle

The most useful post-go-live review is not a one-off health check. Build a regular cycle around your eInvoicing process: review the data, identify the biggest friction points, make a small change and measure what happens next.

Over time, this shifts the focus from “we have eInvoicing” to “we are getting more value from eInvoicing”. It also gives finance and procurement teams a way to keep improving automation as adoption grows.

If you want to review how your current eInvoicing setup is performing, MessageXchange can help you look at onboarding, business rules, integrations and process automation to identify where there may be more value to unlock. Get in touch with our team by filling the form below.