Want to make e-invoicing really easy for your software users? You can!
Case study: Moneybird
Joost Diepenmaat
Co-founder
Moneybird’s connection to Peppol
Moneybird is one of the largest providers of online accounting software in the Netherlands. Moneybird focuses on entrepreneurs and helps them to do their own bookkeeping, to save time and to keep a grip on their financial affairs. “E-invoicing fits this perfectly. Having our own connection to Peppol was therefore a logical step”, says Joost Diepenmaat, co-founder of Moneybird.
The occasion
Joost has been involved with Simplerinvoicing (now the Dutch Peppol Authority) from the beginning. “Moneybird has always supported the ideas of Simplerinvoicing”, says Joost. “For us, Peppol is the logical successor to e-mail, because it offers entrepreneurs many advantages.”
“Processing an e-invoice costs a business significantly less time than processing a PDF or paper invoice,” says Joost. “An e-invoice is booked immediately. The earlier an invoice is booked, the more insight the entrepreneur has into his financial position. There are also advantages for the entrepreneur who sends invoices via Peppol. Because the recipient can process the invoices immediately, they can be paid faster.”
“The fact that Peppol is a secure network also plays a major role,” says Joost. “The secure exchange of (invoice) data is becoming increasingly important, which is why more and more organisations are asking their suppliers to submit e-invoices via Peppol. We want to make it easy for entrepreneurs to send and receive e-invoices through this channel”.
“That we wanted to connect Moneybird to Peppol was obvious”, says Joost. “Then the question arises: are we going to build it ourselves or are we going to use an API? The choice was quickly made. For e-mail, we have a service provider who handles the mail traffic for us and we wanted the same for Peppol.”
Connecting Moneybird to Peppol
Moneybird likes to work with suppliers who have a clear and transparent business model. Joost explains: “We like to switch quickly and look for parties who are ‘to the point’ and have their documentation in order. Tradeinterop was the first party to offer an API, with which we could build Peppol into our own software. Tradeinterop’s documentation was clear and the cooperation was very pleasant. The implementation went smoothly.”
“We don’t have to worry about the connection, it works just fine”.
What does connecting to Peppol mean?
The connection has been active for some time now. Tradeinterop manages the connection and ensures that the most up-to-date specifications are met. “We don’t have to worry about the connection, it works just fine”, says Joost.
Moneybird users can send and receive e-invoices directly from the software via Peppol. Moneybird offers this functionality by default. Within the existing fee, entrepreneurs can send and receive an unlimited number of e-invoices.
“A consultant with a one-man business, for example, can very easily deliver an e-invoice from Moneybird to the government. That offers entrepreneurs real ease and that is what we do it for. We like to be frontrunners in this, because as far as we are concerned Peppol is a much more intelligent way to exchange invoices with each other than other existing channels.”
Growth of 20% per month
Moneybird sees the number of invoices sent and received via Peppol increase by 20% every month. “We are very happy with this continued increase,” says Joost. “This is mainly due to our validation process and Peppol’s autodiscovery functionality, which we use.”
A hard requirement from Peppol is that the data of every organisation that connects to the network must be verified. This ensures that the network remains secure because every member organisation is who they say they are. Verification involves data such as the business address, Chamber of Commerce number, e-mail address and IBAN. Every entrepreneur who indicates at Moneybird that he wants to use Peppol for e-invoicing, goes through this verification process.
Moneybird has fully automated this process. Joost says: “Because we have fully automated the verification process, we can quickly connect Moneybird users to the Peppol network.”
“The autodiscovery functionality also contributes to the growth of e-invoices,” says Joost. “When an entrepreneur sends an invoice from Moneybird, it automatically checks whether the recipient is connected to Peppol. If so, the entrepreneur gets the option to send the invoice via Peppol. Is the entrepreneur not yet connected to the network, but the recipient is? Then he immediately gets the option to connect.” In this way Moneybird actively contributes to increasing the number of connections to the network, which makes secure e-invoicing possible for more and more organisations.
The future of Peppol
“We see enough growth to say that this is the way to go,” says Joost. “I believe that in three to five years a substantial part of the invoices will be sent via Peppol. At the moment, many parties still have to get used to this way of invoicing. Many companies still have to simplify their processes, but once that is done the number of connections will increase rapidly. For us it is very nice that small entrepreneurs can already receive and send e-invoices via Peppol at no extra cost.”
