E-invoice Australia

[Anush Faigley]

InAustralia B2B and B2G e-invoicing is still voluntary in terms of sending such documents. One of the obligation cencerning transaction with public entities is that they must be able handle the receipt of e-invoices when the supplier chooses to send them this way.

We have 20+ years of experience in carrying out various EDI, e-invoicing, and other document exchange projects around the world. In those years, we have successfully connected more than 130,000 entities from over 60 countries.

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The Australian government is committed to investing in e-invoicing. The funding is part of the AUD 67.5 million (ca. EUR 41.5 million) Fighting Scams package announced in the Federal budget and marks the next phase in combating cybercriminals.

Among the key initiatives is an AUD 23.3 million (ca. EUR 14.3 million) investment over four years to support the Australian Taxation Office in maintaining a secure e-invoicing network. This is in recognition that e-invoicing provides business benefits and is a key in fighting scams aimed at Australian businesses.

Revised Peppol Authority Specific Requirements (PASRs) for Australia and New Zealand were recently released on 23 January 2024, accessible via OpenPeppol. This entails, among other things, an updated timeline for the PINT A-NZ migration roll-out plans.

To comply, Software and Service Providers, as outlined in the PINT A-NZ SP Engagement Paper, must enhance their capabilities to support the PINT A-NZ specification by 15 November 2024. Key actions involve enabling capability lookups, sending PINT A-NZ messages for Invoice Senders, and ensuring PINT A-NZ capabilities in SMP as well as the ability to receive and process messages for Invoice Receivers.

As OpenPeppol launched Peppol PINT early this year, PINT became an optional specification in all Peppol geography and only mandatory in individual jurisdictions by decision of the local Peppol Authority. Japan is the first country to implement JP PINT, and Singapore and Malaysia are currently working on the local variants of PINT in their jurisdiction.

On 19 July 2023, Minister for Small Business and Member for Newcastle in a joint media release announced the establishment of a new e-Invoicing Hub for businesses in the Hunter region of New South Wales in Australia.

The Hub, launched in Newcastle, aims to provide businesses with an opportunity to learn about the technology and help them realise the benefits of e-Invoicing. Engagement activities will continue across the region.

In addition to the mandate for Commonwealth government agencies to receive e-invoices by 2022, the Australian Government is now investigating options for the introduction of electronic invoicing in the B2B sector.

This has been an ongoing process; as we reported earlier, the Australian Treasury has released yet another consultation paper for stakeholders to express their wishes and opinions about e-invoicing. The latest consultation paper introduces a Finnish type of legal framework whereby Australian businesses reserve the legal right to request to receive electronic invoices via the Peppol Network. The term used for this procedure is Business eInvoicing Right (BER).

The consultation paper explores how the BER can be introduced to accommodate businesses of different sizes and across various industries. Its introduction aims to legally support companies willing to digitalize and automate their accounts payable invoices whilst promoting e-invoice submission on the supplier side. As already mentioned, the paper envisions the explicit use of the Peppol Network for facilitating the BER.

The New South Wales (NSW) governmental agencies are obliged to adopt e-invoicing for goods and services up to the value of AUD 1 million by 1 January 2022. By making this change six months ahead of the national e-invoicing mandate, the Government will become one of the first states to drive the adoption of electronic invoicing in the country.

The NSW Government has announced that receiving electronic invoices will enter into force from 1 January 2022 for all NSW public entities. Transactions worth up to AUD 1 million (ca. EUR 635 000.00) are in the scope, regardless of goods or services.

The announcement aims to increase work efficiency and save budget by reducing payment times, paperwork, and human errors. Both suppliers and buyers will benefit from this policy when sending and receiving invoices from the NSW authorities. At the same time, the Government will be leading the effort to adopt e-invoicing across Australia.

As of 1 July 2022, e-invoicing for all Commonwealth agencies will become mandatory in Australia. To encourage the adoption of electronic invoicing, the Government will provide AUD 15,3 million in funding.

As part of the commitment to the Digital Business Plan, the Australian Government is investing AUD 15,3 million (ca. EUR 9,7 million) to increase awareness and adopt the mandatory e-invoicing for governmental agencies in 2022.

This funding is aimed at supporting the Treasury and the Australian Peppol E-Invoicing Authority (ATO) in encouraging e-invoicing implementation for businesses. To achieve this goal, the following steps are going to be taken:

Moreover, implementing a universal e-invoicing system like Peppol would help improve not only the interoperability between business systems of different sizes but also increase the speed and scalability between the supplier and the buyer e-document exchange.

Pagero has operated as an accredited Peppol service provider in Australia since 17 March 2020. Our office in Melbourne fully covers Peppol needs in the Trans-Tasmanian region, and the services meet the requirements for B2B trading and B2G via Peppol.

The Australian Government has issued an e-invoicing mandate for Federal Agencies and Departments and is currently aligning with State Government and territories to ensure a broadening of the mandates to include all levels of government.

Pagero has been pre-approved as a service provider for Australian government e-invoicing. In addition to the plan for mandatory government e-invoicing, the Treasury has now opened consultation for options to be considered for mandatory e-invoicing by all businesses.

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has selected and pre-approved Pagero to supply e-invoicing services to the Australian Federal, State and Local Government Departments. Pagero will make up part of a panel of service providers with which government agencies can engage directly without going through a full tender process. Through this expedited process, government agencies significantly reduce time and effort in the search for accredited e-invoicing-related and Peppol services.

The digital business plan allocates $3.6M toward e-invoicing initiatives for suppliers to government agencies. This budget is also appointed for the investigation of options to accelerate the adoption of mandatory e-invoicing for all businesses.

As published by the Treasury, stakeholders can submit options for service providers to be considered for the purpose of mandatory B2B e-invoicing. Responses will be accepted until 18 January 2021.

One key element of the digital business plan includes $3.6 million towards mandating the adoption of electronic invoicing by 1 July 2022 for all Commonwealth government agencies. This to encourage greater adoption amongst businesses supplying to government and within their supply chains. It was also announced that the government will consult on options for mandatory adoption of e-invoicing by businesses, although no specific timeframe has been announced.

Other key elements of the business plan include funding to build digital skills for employees; accelerating the roll-out of 5G throughout Australia; and ensuring trust and cyber security in the digital economy. Funding will also be placed on a new regulatory technology commercialisation initiative to improve compliance and directly support digital technology firms in AU; and consulting on making permanent the temporary reforms to allow companies to hold virtual meetings and execute documents electronically.

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The Australian government (Department of Treasury) has taken initiative with the Business e-Invoicing Right (BER) to push for the adoption of business-to-business (B2B) e-invoicing in Australia. While electronic invoice receipt has been mandated for government agencies in Australia since July 2022, all companies in Australia and New Zealand will be gradually encouraged to exchange e-invoices in the PEPPOL format.

The Australian Government is now seeking wider stakeholder feedback on the idea of a BER and further ways to support business adoption of e-invoicing. The consultation is open until January 25, 2022 and all interested parties are invited to participate.

By way of background, Australia and New Zealand both announced the adoption of the Pan-European Public Procurement Online (PEPPOL) framework for e-invoicing in February 2019. The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) operates the Australian Peppol Authority. Unlike pre-clearance e-invoicing models, the ATO does not receive a copy of the e-invoice and is not able to view the contents of any e-invoices being transmitted between businesses. However, the ATO have defined the Australian requirements for use of the PEPPOL standards and therefore the e-invoices must meet the usual GST tax invoicing requirements. Businesses in Australia wishing to issue e-invoices, must connect to the PEPPOL network through an access point, generally through a third party service provider.

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