Guide to onboard your customers to e-invoicing

Succeeding with e-invoicing is easy when you have the right tools and communication in place!

Here you can find some tips Basware offers to help you succeed. Follow the instructions and start sending e-invoices to your customers. In this article, we will cover the necessity for having a plan and goals, the importance of having the right e-invoice receiving solutions easily available to customers, the way you should communicate to your customers about the change, and the different communication messaging styles.

1.Ensure you have the right solutions in place

When you have Basware e-invoice sending service with the ability to send both e-invoices and PDF-einvoices to your customers, you have the right solutions in place. Sending e-invoices in XML format works normally for companies that already have capability to receive e-invoices into an ERP-system. On mature markets, many of your customers are likely to have this, on immature markets a smaller number of them. The PDF-einvoice normally works well for the rest of the companies, because most companies are able to receive PDFs to an email address.

2.Manage change

It is important to manage change actively and to have clarity on your goals and how you plan to achieve them.
A goal can be for example to turn 50% of paper invoices into e-invoices. A way of achieving the goal can be for example to communicate about the new ways of invoicing frequently to customers.

3. Inform your customers and ask for e-invoice address

Make sure your customers know about the possibility to receive e-invoices from your company. Your target group are the invoice recipients who are currently receiving paper invoices from your company. Collect the responses and needed data from your customers.

4. E-invoice information box printed on paper invoices

If you are using the Basware Printing Service for printing paper invoices to your customers, a small infobox can be printed on all the invoices to promote e-invoice options. If you are printing paper invoices directly from your invoicing software, check the possibility to add a similar info box on the invoices. The text could for example be: Your next invoice could be an e-invoice! Start to receive e-invoices or PDF-invoices via email from Company. Free of charge options available. Sign up here: Your next invoice could be an e-invoice! Start to receive e-invoices or PDF-invoices via email from Customer name. Free of charge options available.Sign up here: Link to Customer's homepage/email address

5. Initiate e-invoicing

Once you have collected responses from your customers, you are almost ready to send e-invoices. If your customers have chosen to receive e-invoices through a service provider, please validate that the service provider is one of Basware partners. When you have made this check, place the e-invoicing address as the billing address for the customer. If your customer selected to receive PDFs via email, no additional checks are required, place the email address as the billing address and start to send e-invoices.

Useful links: