Thursday 10th July, 2014

The Ocean Freight Industry EIPP Standards Advisory Board (SAB), an independent organisation of ocean industry executives from around the world, has created standards guidelines to drive greater efficiency, reduce costs and simplify processes in Electronic Invoice Presentment and Payment (EIPP).

The new guidelines focus on key handling processes and required data elements for invoice and credit note presentment, in order to help the ocean freight industry enhance e-invoicing efficiency and automation in global shipping.

EIPP helps companies overcome the complexities of ocean freight invoicing by automating the manual invoice and reconciliation process,  helping to reduce disputes, improve customer service and raise overall data quality. With the application of these guidelines, the organisation aims to establish a standard for the ocean shipping industry to improve how electronic messages exchanged between parties should be prepared, transmitted and received.

The standards guidelines include;

• Invoice Processing, which starts with invoice issuance and ends with invoice acknowledgement, focusing on the exchange of electronic invoices from an invoice issuer to a payer.
• Credit Note Processing to simplify the process of issuing and sending electronic credit notes to correct previously-issued invoices or other credits from an ocean carrier to a shipper.
• EDI messaging, which provides a standard for both mandatory and optional data elements to be transmitted, as well as a structured format (IFTFCC) for invoice and credit notes to be transmitted between invoice issuers and the payers.

"As a global logistics and transport company, we count on fast and efficient collaboration to expedite business," said Leendert Vis, Chief Information Officer, JF Hillebrand, "and standardised processes make it easier to collaborate internally, as well as with external partners and customers. For instance, we count on electronic invoicing to avoid manual data entry and enable automated error detection when the invoice doesn’t match our anticipated charges."

He added; "By establishing these guidelines for e-invoicing, we are laying the foundation for standards driving greater automation, resulting in improved cost-savings and accelerated processes."