Organizational Resistance to E-Invoicing – Results from an Empirical Investigation among SMEs

Abstract

Abstract. In order to improve the governmental efficiency, effectiveness and transparency, an important part of e-government is the digitalization of documents and the processing of these documents through electronic channels. Such a critical document in business process chains is the invoice, which is why the European Commission strives to increase the adoption and diffusion of electronic invoicing (e-invoicing) among public and private sector organizations. However, the adoption rate among businesses is still low and especially very small firms resist using e-invoicing.By collecting quantitative and qualitative survey data of 416 German companies resisting the usage of e-invoicing, we confirm and explore factors affecting the resistant behavior towards the electronic exchange of invoices and elaborate on differences in those factors with organizational size. In particular among micro firms, the lack of knowledge regarding the theme and procedure of e-invoicing represents the relatively most important influencing factor, while comparatively larger firms also expect huge change management efforts.

E-invoicing: A Catalyst for Digitalization and Sustainability

“…The lack of progress in e-invoicing adoption in recent years might imply that, despite the rec-ognised benefits of adoption, other key factors for organisations are preventing the uptake of e-invoicing from keeping pace with expectations (Hagsten & Falk, 2020). The low adoption rate of e-invoices could indicate that the diffusion is still at an early stage of the process, dominated by factors that prevent enterprises from using e-invoices, such as high costs, lack of system compatibility, increasing frequency of errors and organisational inertia (Haag et al, 2013;Marinagi et al, 2015).…”

“…Empirical studies in Finland (Edelmann & Sintonen, 2006), Sweden (Hagsten & Falk, 2020;Sandberg et al, 2009), Spain (Hernandez-Ortega, 2012), Germany (Haag et al, 2013), the Czech Republic (Veselá & Radiměřský, 2014), Belgium (Poel et al, 2016) and Netherlands (Arendsen & van De Wijngaert, 2011) show that, in addition to cost, the key factors for e-invoicing adoption are firm size, system compatibility, customer requirements, frequency of errors, usability, information deficit, knowledge, efficiency, and underlying ICT infrastructure.…”

Use and intensity of electronic invoices in firms: The example of Sweden

“…A high proportion of e-invoice usage in Denmark can partly be explained by the experience of mandatory e-invoices in public procurement since 2005, https:// ec.europa.eu/cefdigital/wiki/display/CEFDIGITAL/eInvoicingþinþDenmark. high costs, lack of systems compatibility, soaring error frequency and organisational inertia (Haag et al, 2013;Marinagi et al, 2015). Although some of these aspects are difficult to quantify, it is obvious that transmissions over XML-based open standards (internet) hold both economic and practical advantages over the costly, complicated and bilateral EDI exchange systems previously used (Penttinen and Hyytiainen, 2008;Tanner and Richter, 2018).…”

Análisis de los cambios en la profesión contable, tras el proceso de la implementación de la facturación electrónica en Colombia

“…Para potencializar la efectividad y transparencia de este sistema de comunicación, es importante digitalizar y procesar, por medio de canales electrónicos, los diferentes documentos que hacen parte de los insumos de estos procesos (Haag, Born, Kreuzer, & Bernius, 2013). Uno de estos canales es la factura electrónica la cual se puede definir como una herramienta que incluye la información de un derecho comercial -por medio de un sistema virtual y un cifrado que garantiza la autenticidad (Foryszewski, 2006)-, y cumple con las mismas características del documento físico, en donde, para una parte, es una obligación y, para la otra, un derecho.…”