Lithuania - Implementation workshop

Summary

Contact point	Arūnas Cijūnaitis Chief adviser Minstry of Economic affairs Republic of Lithuania +370 687 29438 Arunas.cijunaitis@ukmin.lt
Date	25th October 2018
Venue
Room capacity	100
Target audience (and expected number of attendees)	About 45 NEA, the Network of Electronic Business is a non-profit, member-ruled organisation. NEA offers a neutral and independent meeting place for everyone who is operating in Electronic Business or has an interest in the subject. Participants mostly service providers but also big buyer organization with own development of eInvoicing solutions.

Content and topics to be covered

#	Modules	Your choice
1	Introduction to eInvoicing
2	The legal background
3	The European norm and its content	X
4	Infrastructure based on the eDelivery DSI architecture
5	eInvoicing from a user perspective (including ordering and payments)	(X)
6	Examples of early adopters of large scale eInvoicing – lessons learned	X
7	Basic XML using examples from the EN-syntaxes + mapping/conversion considerations
8	XML Validation mechanisms	X
9	Understanding OASIS UBL 2.1
10	Understanding UN/CEFACT CII D16B
11	Funding and grants for e-Invoicing	X
12	Introduction to the eInvoice DSI resources and tools	X
13	Introduction to CEF Digital and e-Invoice readiness checker	X

Agenda

Introduction to the European standard and how it will be used in Sweden
The directive on electronic invoicing and the Swedish implementation in law
Roadmap on implememtation - dates and transition
Mini-workshops on the requested topics

Questions during the workshop

Question	Answers	Actions to be taken
Who are you?	Almost 100% service providers
Do you have a profile at CEF Digital?	2 out of 45 has a profile
Which eInvoicing formats do you currently use?	In Sweden, mostly Svefaktura and PEPPOL. Also EDIFACT.
Have you started implementing the standard?	Yes, a few. Majority no.
Have you bought your own copy of the standard yet?	No - 100% no.
Have you applied for CEF funding before?	No - 100% no.
Question from audience: Is it common to apply for CEF funding?	Answer: It depends on the countries and especially the Nordic have had few applications. But it would be good to have more Nordic applications from Swedish, Danish and Norwegian service providers.
Question from the audience: Who maintains the standard in Sweden?	Answer: For the European standard → Swedish Standards Institute together with CEN and the other Member States. For the CIUS which will be used in Sweden → PEPPOL For Swedish supporting material such as mapping instructions, stylesheets, user guidelines, test files → SFTI (Single Face To Industry) and PEPPOL
How many have experience in Svefaktura? (for comparison with the Semantic model)	Almost 100% of the audience
How many have looked into detail in the semantic model (EN)?	Almost non
How many have looked at the PEPPOL BIS BILLING 3.0 and PEPPOL CIUS?	1/3 of the audience
Deadline for implementing the new standard?	The deadline in the directive is 18th April 2019, but in some countries there is different deadlines such Norway with 1st January 2019 and Sweden with 1st April 2019
	COMMENT: As service providers we hope that Extensions to the standard is not going to be used, as this would stop interoperability between users and service providers.
If other countries impose earlier deadlines for the standard - would this mean that Swedish service providers should have the same standard if sending to Norway?	No, Norway should still have PEPPOL BIS 2 and EHF until the overall deadline of 18th April 2019. So the period in between is still ok to send with old invoices.
	COMMENT: Overall, we believe that the new standard will be much better as documentation and implementation guidelines is improved than previous standards.

Input from the Mini-workshops

The law and the new standard will give more uptake, bigger volumes and a bigger "e-invoice industry".
There will be a lot of integrations projects, particularly for those suppliers who can't use standard off-the-shelf solutions
Much focus on "technical" aspects (standards, formats) from the buyers. Better to let the service provider offer solutions and focus on benefits
Invoice issuing system often have bad data quality or rudimentary structured data - this can be a challange when creating the e-invoice which requires high level of structure data
Extension will create problems and cause unnessary cost, if they become common
Important that service providers takes responsibility about interoperability and to explain to their customers that "customized implementations" and specific requirements (extensions, CIUS) comes with a cost related to interoperability and onboarding
XSLT for transformation from CII to UBL would be great to have and it would be implemented if it has good enough quality
Negative invoice is seen as a problem. In Sweden, CreditNotes have always been used for crediting.
The PEPPOL CIUS is a step forward, the documentation looks very good. An improvement to existing documentation for PEPPOL BIS and Svefaktura
It is often not the technical aspects that halts/limits e-Invoice adoption, it is lack of knowledge (on the buyer/seller side)
Implementation can be a problem for some ERP systems
Some thinks that very few extensions and CIUS will be used in Sweden (as PEPPOL is/will be mandates for public sector)
To much focus on eInvoice is taking away the focus on the whole procurment process (catalogue, order, delivery). This has traditionally been important in Sweden but lately, only invoice.
More trainings will be necessary
Invoice Response message is important and should be prioritized
Those who have invested in PDF-only solutions will have big issues next year with the new law
Validation rules should be multi-lingual