Monthly Archives: May 2024

30/05/2024

Prevention is better than a cure: Here’s how to prevent issues when implementing EDI

Putting some effort in before embarking on your EDI journey will put you in good stead. Think about your processes and what you’re trying to achieve up-front, and it’ll help you navigate through the stages of implementation with ease. Here are our suggestions of things to consider.

Get your relevant teams involved

When you’re going through the implementation stages of EDI, it’s important to have a core team that includes a representative from all relevant departments of the business. Having all teams involved in the EDI process ensures communication and transparency of the EDI project. It also ensures understanding and consistency of the objectives and goals of the project.

Be clear on your requirements

Clearly defining your requirements as well as your trading partners’ requirements is key. Some things to think about are:
  • How you’ll connect to your VAN, whether that’s by sFTP, an API, AS2 or something else.
  • What file format your software exports and imports
  • What file format you’ll exchange with your trading partners
  • If you require any business rules, validations or data enrichment.

Have a plan for onboarding

Planning ahead for the onboarding stage of implementation is important to ensure success. If you’re onboarding your suppliers, make sure you segment them according to the goals you’ve set. This might turn out to be segmenting by capability, or order volumes. Each segment needs to have tailored communications that relates to them. If you’re a supplier onboarding to EDI, think about how you will comply with your partners’ requirements. If you’re not using EDI, you’ll need to look at either a web portal solution or an integrated solution. We go over what might be best for you in our blog here.

Testing with your EDI provider and trading partners can take time

During testing, the best thing you can do is be as prepared as possible. This means having a team that is set to do the testing. They will send and receive messages back and forth, but the faster they can respond, the quicker testing will be completed. To relieve pressure on retailers who are onboarding suppliers, MessageXchange provides a message compliance testing (MCT) tool. This automates the testing process for you so suppliers can login to a portal and go through the testing process themselves. This reduces the need for retailer teams to be following up with suppliers. The tool allows suppliers to:
  • generate realistic POs in the format they would receive in production, complete with their GLN, vendor number and products.
  • upload messages they would send to you in production, like shipping notices, invoices, control messages and even SSCC labels for you to check.
Want to learn more about our implementation process? Ask our experts by getting in touch below.

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28/05/2024

Australia Budget 2024: Fighting fraud and increasing cash flow through eInvoicing

In 2023, total losses from reported scams reached $2.74 billion, according to the ACCC’s Scamwatch. In response to this, we saw the recent Australian federal government budget announcement include significant funding for digital technology and fraud reduction. eInvoicing is one of the way the government sees businesses, government and the wider economy can benefit from digital technology and achieve a reduction in fraud. Here’s how the budget announcement impacts eInvoicing.

Improved cash flow

The government is looking to fund initiatives that improve payment times to small businesses. They have committed $25.3 million over 4 years to improve cash flow and boost productivity by supporting the Payment Times Reporting Scheme. This adds to the existing policy introduced by the government of 5 days payment terms for all invoices where Peppol compliant eInvoicing capability exists.

Increased eInvoicing adoption

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) will receive $23.3 million to continue operating the nation’s eInvoicing network. This funding will also be used to increase eInvoicing adoption in the economy to improve cash flow, disrupt payment redirection scams and boost productivity for small businesses. As part of this funding the government will be:
  1. Continuing the operation of the Australia Peppol Authority and the eInvoicing network, including specifications, accreditation, and network governance.
  2. Working with DSPs, business, and government to ensure the eInvoicing environment is ready to expand at scale:
    • Increasing federal agency readiness to send and receive eInvoices.
    • Working with industry to resolve implementation issues.
    • Increasing DSP readiness.
  3. Targeted activities to increase adoption:
    • Working with DSPs to explore further opportunities to proactively register customers onto the eInvoicing network.
    • Securing more large business champions who will actively promote and onboard business partners.
  4. Develop policy:
    • to help embed eInvoicing as a default channel for sending and receiving invoices in government.
    • to increase economy-wide adoption of the technology.
    • To developing eInvoicing branding.

Fighting digital scams

Small and medium businesses are among the potential beneficiaries of a $67.5 million funding package to help fight digital scams. The government will give $37.3 million to develop mandatory industry codes and enforce them to guard against scams through a Scams Code Framework.Want to learn how eInvoicing help your business against scams and improve efficiency? Get in touch with our team by completing the form below.

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