E-invoicing Audit: A Project Logbook for a Digitization Initiative
Mandatory e-invoicing and invoice digitization projects lead companies through a profound transformation of their processes, tools, and information systems.
To ensure a successful transition, a preliminary audit is essential. It helps define the project scope, identify affected processes, pinpoint potential pitfalls, and establish a realistic roadmap.
In this article, we invite you to go behind the scenes of an audit conducted by ICD International for one of its clients.
For confidentiality reasons, the names of the stakeholders, teams, and organizations involved have been omitted.
The objective: to gain a practical understanding of how an e-invoicing readiness audit is conducted, from project launch to the final presentation.
To learn more, you can also explore oure-invoicing support.
Why conduct an audit before e-invoicing?
Mandatory e-invoicing is more than just a format change.
It impacts the entire invoicing cycle:
- issuing customer invoices;
- receiving supplier invoices;
- third-party data quality;
- ERP integrations;
- validation workflows;
- lifecycle statuses;
- specific use cases;
- e-invoicing and e-reporting obligations;
- accounting, tax, and business processes.
An audit helps to assess the current situation and build a tailored roadmap for the company.
It helps answer several key questions:
- Which flows are affected by the reform?
- Which tools are currently in use?
- Which data needs to be made reliable?
- Which processes need to evolve?
- Which specific cases need to be addressed?
- What target architecture should be planned?
- Which Approved Platform should be chosen?
- Which projects should be prioritized?
Without this scoping phase, the project risks being approached solely from a tool perspective, when in reality it impacts the entire organization.
September 20 — 9:30 AM: Audit kick-off
The audit begins with a kick-off meeting involving all stakeholders in the project.
These typically include:
- the internal project manager responsible for the transition to e-invoicing;
- the accounts receivable manager;
- the ERP specialists;
- the business managers;
- the IT project managers;
- technical architects;
- relevant service providers;
- accounting and finance teams.
This kick-off meeting serves to present the audit objectives, reiterate the stakes of the reform, and align all participants on the working methodology.
It's also an opportunity to clarify everyone's roles, responsibilities, deadlines, and expected deliverables.
From this first meeting, certain areas of concern emerge: business specificities, particular flows, legacy tools, ERP dependencies, or even differences in maturity between teams.
The audit objectives
The kick-off meeting formalizes two main objectives.
The first objective is to prepare the company for the tax obligations related to e-invoicing.
The second is to identify optimization opportunities for customer invoicing processes and supplier invoice processing.
The audit should therefore enable the company to:
- understand the impacts of the reform;
- map its invoicing flows;
- identify specific use cases;
- analyze its existing tools;
- evaluate the quality of its data;
- define a target architecture;
- prioritize the initiatives to be launched;
- prepare for the selection of a suitable solution.
Following the kick-off, the company will have a clear roadmap, with a shared vision of the challenges, timeline, and workshops to be organized.
27, 28 and 29 September — Business Workshops
The business workshops are an essential step in the audit.
For three days, the objective is to cover all invoicing cases encountered within the company, both outgoing and incoming.
Each workshop provides a precise description of existing flows and their integration with the relevant systems:
- ERP;
- accounting tools;
- invoicing software;
- business tools;
- workflow management solutions;
- internal interfaces;
- satellite applications.
For each type of flow, several elements are analyzed.
The elements analyzed during the business workshops
The workshops enable the collection of necessary information for process mapping.
The teams specifically analyze:
- the volume of invoices to be processed;
- the types of invoices;
- customer and supplier flows;
- the companies involved;
- the legal entities involved;
- partner typology;
- local and international flows;
- reference data quality;
- data completeness;
- the stakeholders involved in each flow;
- the applications used;
- data formats;
- processing times;
- disputes and anomalies;
- validation workflows.
This phase helps to understand the company's operational reality, beyond theoretical documentation.
It highlights business practices, exceptions, workarounds, blocking points, and risks to anticipate.
Identifying specific cases
One of the major challenges of the audit is to identify specific cases that can complicate compliance.
In this audit, several specific topics were analyzed:
- self-billing;
- subscription invoices;
- billing mandates;
- B2C flows;
- legacy processes;
- multi-entity invoices;
- tools not connected to the ERP;
- specific validation workflows;
- missing or unstructured data.
A concrete example was identified: an existing B2C flow, in place for several years, representing less than 1% of the total invoice volume, but requiring a complete overhaul to comply with the reform.
This type of case is common. Even a low volume can become a blocking point if the process is not compliant or if it relies on insufficiently structured data.
October 10 — 9:00 AM: functional audit debriefing
A first interim debriefing is organized to share the functional conclusions.
This step allows for validating the understanding of business processes, existing flows, and specific cases impacted by the reform.
The ICD International teams notably present:
- the invoice flow mapping;
- the main business processes;
- the flows concerned by the reform;
- the out-of-scope flows;
- the specific use cases;
- the points of attention;
- the initial optimization avenues.
This debriefing also helps confirm the maturity gaps between certain stages of the process.
Some phases are already partially digitized, while others still rely on manual processing, email exchanges, or minimally automated controls.
The first identified points of attention
The functional review highlights several issues to address.
Among the main areas of concern:
- quality of customer and supplier master data;
- dispute management;
- anomaly processing;
- process heterogeneity;
- lack of visibility into certain flows;
- non-integrated tools;
- insufficiently structured data;
- overly lengthy approval processes;
- special cases not covered by standard processes.
These elements are not just constraints. They also represent opportunities for improvement.
The reform can become a lever to further simplify, enhance the reliability of, and automate invoicing processes.
November 16 — 9:00 AM: technical workshops
After the business workshops, the audit continues with a technical phase.
The objective is to precisely understand the IT environment in which the e-invoicing solution will need to be deployed.
This step allows for mapping existing systems, applications, interfaces, and connection points.
Specifically, the teams analyze:
- the existing IT organization;
- the relevant ERP systems;
- accounting tools;
- business applications;
- specific modules;
- network protocols;
- security rules;
- data formats;
- inbound and outbound flows;
- existing interfaces;
- integration constraints;
- dependencies with external providers.
This phase is essential for defining a realistic target architecture that is compatible with the existing environment.
Building the target architecture
Technical workshops help prepare the target blueprint for the invoice dematerialization process.
The objective is to determine how flows will need to circulate going forward between:
- ERPs;
- accounting tools;
- business applications;
- the Approved Platform;
- clients;
- suppliers;
- partner platforms;
- internal validation systems.
This target architecture must meet several requirements:
- regulatory compliance;
- exchange security;
- interoperability;
- operational continuity;
- traceability;
- processing capacity;
- integration with existing systems;
- scalability.
This step also allows for the integration of the e-invoicing project into the company's usual IT governance.
November 25 — 10:00 AM: full audit report presentation
The final report presentation brings together all teams involved in the audit.
It presents the complete summary of the functional and technical workshops, as well as recommendations for the next steps of the project.
The audit report includes:
- the target scheme for receiving invoices;
- the target scheme for issuing invoices;
- the flows affected by the reform;
- out-of-scope flows;
- new flows to implement;
- data to process;
- systems to connect;
- compliance timeline;
- necessary features;
- potential solution scenarios;
- business transformations to anticipate;
- organizational transformations;
- technical transformations;
- projects to launch;
- stakeholders to engage;
- estimated durations per project.
This report provides the company with a clear vision of the scope to cover to be compliant and operational.
A deliverable to facilitate solution benchmarking
The audit is not solely for producing an assessment.
It also helps prepare for choosing the most suitable solution.
Thanks to the audit report, the company has a solid basis for comparing market solutions.
Benchmarking can then be done based on concrete criteria:
- coverage of actual flows;
- ERP integration capability;
- handling of specific cases;
- regulatory compliance;
- status management;
- process automation;
- exchange security;
- quality of support;
- solution scalability;
- capacity to handle volumes.
This method avoids choosing a solution based solely on a sales demonstration or a generic functional grid.
The choice is based on the company's operational reality.
DEMATRUST: a solution to go from audit to deployment
With DEMATRUST, ICD International assists companies in complying with the electronic invoicing reform.
The solution allows for centralizing, automating, and securing electronic invoice flows.
It notably covers:
- the reception of supplier invoices;
- the issuance of customer invoices;
- the management of regulatory formats;
- status tracking;
- the transmission of mandatory data;
- integration with ERPs;
- traceability of exchanges;
- the automation of accounting processes.
For VSEs and SMEs, ICD International also offers DEMATRUST Light, a solution designed to facilitate compliance with a simple and progressive approach.
Key takeaways
An e-invoicing audit is an essential step to effectively prepare for the reform.
It helps to understand the current situation, map out flows, identify specific cases, assess technical constraints, and build a tailored roadmap.
It also helps the company choose a solution based on its real needs, rather than generic criteria.
Project success depends on the ability to involve the right stakeholders, analyze business processes, secure IT integrations, and anticipate organizational impacts.
Do you want to launch an audit to prepare for your transition to e-invoicing under the best conditions? Discover oure-invoicing support services or contact our experts via the ICD International contact page.
