Over on the TradeShift website, a recent post highlights the downsides for enterprise of PDF invoicing. I know that SI has been preaching going “e” at all costs, but, where Supply Management is concerned, PDF is not really “e”. It’s just paper being sent over the wire.

When your buyer’s organization gets a PDF invoice, the accounts payable clerk has to print it out and then manually enter the information in the accounts payable system. And yes, they typically do have to print it out as they are usually given a single monitor setup and the entire display is usually taken up by their AP program so they have to print it out. So all you’ve done is shifted the task of printing out the paper (and killing a tree) to them.

And, more importantly, you haven’t increased the speed at which they can process the invoice, or the accuracy, and have sacrificed the benefits you get when going electronic. If you use EDI, XML, or another standard, open, document format, then the buyer can import it into their AP system automatically with 100% accuracy — and you get all the benefits that go along with faster, 100%, accurate processing. These benefits could include getting in the queue in time for early payment discounts (should you want a quicker payment) and a buyer who can more quickly detect who the active, relevant, suppliers are as your transactions get in the system faster.

So don’t replace paper with PDFs that just get turned into paper. It doesn’t help anyone. And don’t trust anyone who claims they have software that can “automatically process PDF invoices”. There are so many different invoice formats that there is no software that gets, or even comes close enough to, 100% accuracy that you know, at some point, your invoice is going to get totally messed up and you are going to get 201,211.13 for that Million dollar invoice (when it thinks the date stamp, 20121113, is actually the total amount due).