This blog was last updated on July 7, 2021
Following recent acquisitions in Latin America, Sovos announced today we are establishing operations in Portugal with the acquisitions of PetaPilot and Saphety. The two companies both count tax authorities and businesses as customers, and they both solve challenges related to mandates that are accelerating across Europe and beyond, as VAT and business-to-government (B2G) reporting regulations converge.
Porto-based PetaPilot delivers e-accounting solutions for the global Standard Audit File for Tax (SAF-T) requirements, and Lisbon-based Saphety provides compliant e-invoicing services that will enable Sovos to offer a single connection for compliant invoicing. Combined with existing Sovos offerings, the addition of technology from these two businesses create the first complete compliance solution for multinational companies and small-to-medium businesses addressing Portugal mandates, with global benefits.
Why PetaPilot?
The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) designed the SAF-T standard to give tax administrations frequent, digital visibility into business accounting systems. However, there’s nothing standard about the way governments have adopted SAF-T. The requirements are substantially different from country to country, as are the systems from which IT and tax teams must pull data to comply. Fixed assets, invoice records, human resources, inventory — all of it needs to get reported in a standardized format during an e-audit.
PetaPilot is a SAF-T pioneer and leader, and Sovos will leverage its technology within our new Advanced Periodic Reporting cloud platform to deliver data intelligence through cloud-based machine learning and AI capabilities. This comes at a crucial time for our customers, as countries across Europe and beyond renew their interest in the SAF-T standard, which Portugal was the first to adopt in 2008. Today, SAF-T is also in use in Angola, Austria, France, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway and Poland, with Romania and Hungary expected to follow in 2022.
Why Saphety?
Meanwhile, continuous transaction controls (CTCs) are also proliferating, with new mandates expected in France, Poland and Hungary in 2023. Governments around the world are combining these tax-oriented e-invoicing mandates with frameworks and platforms for public procurement, weaving a complex regulatory web inspired as much by Latin American e-invoicing methods as by frameworks such as the Pan-European Procurement Online (PEPPOL).
As we bring Saphety’s technology and talent to Sovos, we can offer a seamless, compliant e-invoice delivery option to accompany our solutions for e-signatures, e-archiving, clearance, VAT reporting and more. As a specialized compliance provider, Sovos will continue to focus on the regulated aspects of invoicing and reporting, and we’ll continue to strengthen our strategic partnerships with world-class e-invoicing, ERP, ecommerce and purchasing service providers.
A global strategy that reflects the local demands of tax compliance
We often talk about our mission to Solve Tax for GoodⓇ everywhere our customers do business, and we know fulfilling that mission requires us to prioritize local compliance challenges. Today’s announced acquisitions, like the seven others Sovos closed over the past 12 months, reflect this approach. As we establish operations in Portugal, Sovos now has experts working in more than 13 countries.
We understand local and regional mandates. We understand the challenges they present to companies doing business domestically and across borders. And we understand the technology challenges created by the rapid digitization of tax. It’s a depth of expertise we’re putting to work every day for more than 20,000 customers worldwide.
Learn more about Sovos here.
