Bunnings’ move to eInvoicing delivers major gains for kiwi businesses

The challenge

Bunnings New Zealand is a nationwide home improvement retailer serving DIY, trade and commercial customers. They rely heavily on emailed PDF invoices. This creates avoidable friction for both Bunnings and their customers:

• Some invoices are missed, delayed or lost in their customers’ inboxes
• Manual data entry increases administration time and errors for their business customers
• Failed invoice delivery is costly

They set out to make invoicing easier and more reliable for their business customers, while improving efficiency and security.

Why eInvoicing

Bunnings initially implemented eInvoicing in Australia. Drawing on insights and experience gained from the rollout; Bunnings adopted a similar approach in NZ - to send invoices directly into customers’ accounting systems.

eInvoicing was chosen because it:

• Works across different accounting systems without bespoke integrations
• Fits alongside existing invoice channels without disruption
• Provides more secure and reliable delivery than email or PDFs

Customer onboarding approach

Once a customer registers to receive eInvoices, Bunnings can automatically send eInvoices to them. No additional setup or configuration is required for their customers. And with more than 50,000 businesses registered to receive eInvoices in NZ, a good chunk of them are Bunnings customers.

As more NZ businesses register to receive eInvoices, Bunnings use of eInvoicing will continue to grow, increasing the benefits for its customers.

“eInvoicing has made it easier for our business customers. Invoices are delivered directly into their accounting systems, which reduces manual handling, improves reliability and helps minimise the risk of invoices being missed,” said David English, MICM, Head of Credit, Bunnings Group Limited

The impact and benefits

Since adopting eInvoicing, Bunnings has seen:

• More reliable invoice delivery, with fewer failures than email and PDFs
• Lower administration effort, reducing follow ups and re sending
• Improved customer experience, no manual entering of invoices received
• Stronger security, reducing exposure to invoice fraud

“Thanks to the way eInvoices are transmitted directly between software systems we have seen a sevenfold decrease in transmission failures since making the switch to eInvoicing. These time savings have translated directly into cost savings and efficiencies that have made the investment into getting set up more than worth it,” says David.

What’s next

Bunnings plans to continue expanding its use of eInvoicing by increasing uptake among customers. They also require all their customers to provide a NZ Business Number when signing up as a new Bunnings customer (The NZBN is a key requirement to use eInvoicing and acts like your eInvoicing phone number).