Four years ago, we moderated an interesting debate via LinkedIn that revolved around a simple question: what do we mean by compliance? As ever, we had an opinion and offered a detailed definition that kick-started a great discussion thread. We would like to believe that that discussion contributed to heightened awareness among e-invoicing practitioners that people from different walks of life can mean very different things when they talk about ‘compliance’.
But here we are – four years later – faced with a frustrating conclusion: ‘compliance’ still means a lot of different things to different people. Why frustrating? No, it’s not about our pride. We’re genuinely bothered about this because it poses a real problem to our partners and customers as they are subject to two major forces:
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- Government regulations and technical controls are increasing by the day.
- There’s an acceleration of the move from installed software to the use of rich end-to-end business transaction and process platforms in the cloud.
Sloppy compliance definitions
These forces mean that four years later, there’s even less room for providers and users of such cloud-based functionality to be sloppy about defining ‘compliance’. For example, what does the service provider accept responsibility for, and which compliance aspects remain the responsibility of its customer? Imprecise or lacking definitions of the different categories of ‘compliance’ lead to misunderstandings, sales failures and contract breakdowns. And this is unfortunately what’s happening.
The need for standard definitions
We believed a standard-like approach was needed to address this challenge once and for all. And we were not alone. During the last year we’ve been part of the policy and compliance working group of EESPA, the European E-Invoicing Service Provider Association. Our mission has been to come up with a first set of standard definitions of the sub-categories that comprise ‘compliance’ in an e-invoicing context. The group, which brings together compliance, legal and product experts from EESPA members, has combined strengths to publish this first set of definitions.
Sorry – no spoiler alerts here though: the EESPA definitions will be published soon on www.eespa.eu. Keep your eye on that website and our LinkedIn group, and give us your feedback on the definitions when they come out.
