eInvoicing Adoption Leaders Group minutes – 31 March 2025

Meeting details

Date

• Monday, 31 March 2025

Time

• 1:00pm to 3:00pm (Auckland, Wellington)
• 10:00am to 12:00 noon (Brisbane) and 11:00am to 1:00pm (Melbourne, Sydney)

Locations

• Auckland: Fonterra NZ, 109 Fanshawe Street
• Wellington: Pastoral House, 25 The Terrace
• Remote (Australia and rest of New Zealand): MS Teams

Attendence

Minutes

• Welcome and administration
• Manager of eInvoicing Adoption (MBIE) – Proposed NZ Government Procurement (NZGP) Supplier Rule
• Payment times and eInvoicing
• Digital Business Enablement – New Zealand Business Number's (NZBN) new transformation plan
• Digital Service Providers Australia and New Zealand (DSPANZ) briefing
• Member’s updates – eInvoicing progress, commitments, and roundtable discussion
• Closing remarks

Welcome and administration

• Co-chairs welcomed members and thanked those who had travelled to 
  attend.
• Fonterra, as the host, welcomed attendees and introduced Hon Minister Chris Penk.
• Hon Minister Chris Penk (Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing), thanked attendees and acknowledged the work done to get New Zealand where it is today with eInvoicing. He emphasised to members that he was keen to receive insights on ways to benefit small businesses and increase cashflow.

Manager of eInvoicing Adoption (MBIE) – Proposed NZ Government Procurement (NZGP) Supplier Rule

The Manager eInvoicing Adoption provided a progress update on the NZ Government Procurement proposal for large business suppliers to pass on payment terms to sub-contractors. Member discussion raised the following points:

• Acknowledged this would help New Zealand get to the tipping point for critical mass in eInvoicing adoption
• Several members noted that mandates drive investment for organisations and software providers prioritising their investment decisions across global markets
• Members debated views over whether the 5-day incentive of eInvoicing payment by government (compared to 10 days for other invoice types) provides sufficient incentive alone for suppliers to move to eInvoicing 
• eInvoicing implementation can vary in complexity 
• Members were encouraged to make an individual submission on behalf of their organisation.

Payment times and eInvoicing

Discussion on payment times:

• Speed and predictability of cash moving around the economy is important – 20th of the month payment terms is an old business practice.
• To achieve faster payment, some organisations have already automated processes, whereas others may need to investigate additional tools such as daily payment runs.
• Discussion about the interdependence of eInvoicing and business payment times: eInvoicing can be one important tool to enable faster payments. Wider Procure to Pay (P2P) process and system improvements (beyond eInvoicing) are also critical for the target end state of faster (and ideally touchless) processing. 

Digital Business Enablement – New Zealand Business Number's (NZBN) new transformation plan

MBIE’s Director - Digital Business Enablement updated attendees on product development for NZBN.

Digital Service Providers Australia and New Zealand (DSPANZ) briefing

An international speaker from DSPANZ – Digital Service Providers Australia New Zealand provided a briefing on the international momentum of eInvoicing.

Globally, eInvoicing is the flavour of the decade and many regions of the world are realising the importance of harmonisation and interoperability as well as the need to maintain investment to keep pace with cyber-risks.

Member’s updates – eInvoicing progress, commitments, and roundtable discussion

• A member organisation is enabled to receive via their main Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and have a change program underway for their rollout. They send around 1 million invoices annually with heavy paper-based processes and are in the process of exploring sending eInvoices.
• A member organisation plans to implement eInvoicing send capability and onboard New Zealand customers. They noted that the proposed NZGP Rule regarding supplier eInvoicing has helped their global team prioritise this project in New Zealand. They shared some of the work they have carried out globally emphasising the increase in invoice fraud and highlighted the part eInvoicing plays in helping to reduce this.
• A member organisation has gone live with receiving eInvoices and are now focusing on supplier onboarding and customer education. Implementation was smooth and easy, and they see the benefit in fraud reduction and growing digital adoption across NZ’s economy. They have identified a large number of suppliers that are already enabled.
• A member organisation has significantly accelerated their sending of eInvoices to customers and mandated the need for new trade customers to have an NZBN to facilitate this. They are now sending over 21,000 eInvoices to around 2,700 customers monthly.
• A member organisation highlighted the labour intensiveness of setting up first time users but recognised the benefits of it. They are onboarding more government agencies to send eInvoices in New Zealand and are also planning to start sending to 10 major government agencies in Australia.
• A member organisation is focusing on addressing internal barriers to enable scaling sending eInvoices to government. They are now ready to rollout eInvoice sending to several additional agencies and are modernising their eBilling platform to scale sending eInvoices.
• A member organisation is enabled to send eInvoices and are sending to 13 customers, mainly government agencies. They have been approached by some corporate customers asking for eInvoices. They plan to work on receiving eInvoices and the wider P2P process as a future project. 
• A member organisation is currently implementing eInvoicing send capability and plan to first send to one government agency, followed by 2 to 3 more after May. They plan to implement eInvoicing receive capability following a planned ERP upgrade. 
• A member organisation has doubled the number of suppliers eInvoices since last quarter and is now focused on getting larger suppliers on board. They are communicating their preference of receiving eInvoices to suppliers and are promoting eInvoicing to their customer base.
• A member organisation continues to onboard customers and is focused on growing customer utilisation/transactions. They are starting to see evidence of the network effect among their customer base.

Updates received over email:

• A member organisation has made steady progress and are targeting to go live with receiving eInvoices by early July.
• A member organisation has expanded the scope of discovery phase and included one of their large business units. They are currently reviewing proposals from providers.

Closing remarks

• The chairs summarised the common themes from the discussions and the Minister provided closing remarks.
• The group agreed on next meeting to be held around September.
• A group photo was taken for social media posts. 

Meeting closed at 2:55pm.