Tuesday 3rd June, 2014

NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS), a leading business support services provider to the NHS, has partnered with Tradeshift to implement e-invoicing through Tradeshift's platform.

Using the platform, NHS SBS will help transform the NHS supply chain by encouraging suppliers to its NHS clients to submit and track their invoices electronically through Tradeshift, making payments more efficient, reducing the burden on NHS resources and helping suppliers receive payments more quickly.

NHS SBS provides business support in the areas of finance and accounting, employment services, procurement, and primary care services. This support depends on a complex network of external partners, suppliers and departments, with up to 30,000 paper invoices processed daily.

The platform enables invoices to be scanned, verified and tallied against 15 checks, significantly reducing the margin for error. It enables suppliers to connect and interact with clients of NHS SBS throughout the payments process, making it transparent to all parties.

With late payments along the supply chain increasingly damaging the solvency of businesses in the UK, the ability to accurately and swiftly process and pay invoices is a vital and ethical driver for the partnership.

Simon Murphy, NHS SBS Director of Finance and Accounting, said: “We are constantly looking to make business processes as efficient as possible in order to derive maximum value from NHS resources. Tradeshift enables us to do exactly that. Implementing e-invoicing is an incredibly important step for us in simplifying and modernising supplier interactions on behalf of our clients, by allowing our organisation and our suppliers to focus on value-adding activities.”