Electronic invoicing in public procurement: guide

How the eInvoicing solution works

The solution works as follows:

1. A supplier sends their invoices to a pre-determined email address. Although any readable data format would be acceptable, it is likely the majority of suppliers will issue invoices in a PDF format generated straight from its billing application.
2. The solution connects to the eInvoicing mail server then collects and processes each new email received.
3. It then reads the invoice data embedded within the PDF (or any other readable data format), validates it against pre-agreed validation rules and produces an XML file which contains all the electronic invoice records.

For PECOS P2P users:

The XML file is posted by the service provider via a secure web-based facility to PECOS.

Once invoices are matched within PECOS P2P using the automated workflow for the invoice integration that already exists, it will pass over the matched invoices to the finance system for payment.

Non-PECOS users:

If the public body matches and processes invoices in their finance system the most common way to deliver the data is to simply drop it into an sFTP folder.

The public bodies finance system will then pull the data in automatically during an overnight run into the finance system where existing workflow will manage the invoice through to payment.