Unifiedpost Group and municipal data centre Komm.ONE transition the city of Heidelberg to an efficient invoice processing solution.
The possibility of accepting electronic invoices and processing them further, digitally creates considerable advantages for the city of Heidelberg. This brings the city a big step closer to its goal of becoming a digitalised and networked municipality.
M. Wieske from the treasury office comments: "With this uniquely uncomplicated solution from Unifiedpost Group, we were able to automate our processes and simplify the internal workflows. All in all, these advantages mean that our municipal employees finally have more time for the real concerns of our citizens."
Saving costs with Unifiedpost Group’s solution
The city of Heidelberg receives thousands of invoices every year, which previously caused a large amount of administrative work. In order to reduce costs, but also to realise the vision of a digitalised municipality, they brought on board Unifiedpost Group.
Thanks to the joint solution from Komm.ONE and Unifiedpost Group, the city of Heidelberg can accept invoices electronically in numerous formats, without manually processing required.
The cooperation with the municipal computer centre Komm.ONE and Unifiedpost Group ensures that invoices are transferred directly and automatically to the Komm.ONE workflow for further processing. Not only are processes more efficient, but the change allowed the city of Heidelberg to be well prepared for the public administrator's obligation to accept Xinvoices from 2020.
Simple connection without changing existing IT structures
The implementation of the new system was quick and efficient. Since then, the city has received invoices in the electronic invoice receipt book. Data distribution is conducted in Komm.ONE's data centre, meaning that the city does not have to make any changes to its system. This enables both data centre customers and on-premise customers to connect, without changes to firewalls or internal IT. Through Unifiedpost Group's portal, the city can create automated campaigns to invite its suppliers to send invoices directly as PDFs.
Electronic invoice - Mandatory from 2020 at municipal level
With XInvoice, German legislation is responding to EU Directive 2014/55/EU. This obliges public administrations throughout Europe to process their invoices electronically. At the same time, the EU wants to harmonise national invoicing standards.
In Germany, the switch to electronic invoicing and acceptance has been legally mandatory since November 2020. This affects not only the traditional public authorities at the federal, state and local levels, but also a number of other publicly owned companies such as schools and hospitals.
The scope of the XInvoice standard is therefore much broader than first assumed. Since November 2020, companies that issue invoices to a public sector customer have also been required to submit their invoices electronically in accordance with the XInvoice standard.
Switching to electronic invoicing with Unifiedpost Group
Unifiedpost Group supports municipalities and public sector companies in meeting all legal requirements. With Unifiedpost Group's e-invoicing solution, municipalities can quickly and easily switch to electronic invoicing and become well prepared for the future.
The case study was originally in German, created by crossinx, the former name of Unifiedpost Germany - the German entity of Unifiedpost Group.
