This is just a thought, more like a question for the experts.
Even now it seems a bit difficult for a small company to start recieving electronic invoices. This might become a bit easier if the smallest companies could choose to recieve e-invoices into their internet bank like consumers nowadays can. They would only give a consent in the bank when opening the account and to the company sending the invoice.
It would be enough if the picture of the invoice could show on his bank statement before the payment and the entrepreneuer could save the picture for accounting purposes. This would get really efficient if the pictures of the paid invoices could be sent along the account statements by the bank. This way the invoices could "swim" straight to the bookkeeping system and nobody would have to search for the paper reciepts. Could this be possible?
Pictures are bad, because they carry information only for human eyes. You can't extract the VAT amounts from a picture. You can't search your invoices by text in the pictures.
We must think that the invoice is the INFORMATION of the invoice. We should just ignore the layout and logos in the invoice.
I think costs are one of the problems why small companies can not receive electronic invoices yet. The SINV protocol (see my idea "B2B invoicing with zero transaction fees") tries to address this by eliminating invoice operators. If the accounting software used by small companies (or accounting firms used by small companies) would support SINV, the small companies could get the same benefits as bigger companies now.
www.netvisor.fi, www.procountor.com
At least these two service providers can offer small companies a bookkeeping system that is fully compatible with e-invoicing. 60€ € > is a moderate price taking into consideration savings obtained from e-invoicing and value added by real-time financial information. Paperless, (almost) automatic and real-time electronic accounting is reality today.
