Orion Telecom has introduced e-billing for its client base, successfully reducing administration and paperwork delays, and improving overall efficiencies in the invoicing chain. The implementation complies fully with the South African Revenue Services (SARS) regulations which have been specially formulated for this purpose.
Even though e-billing is now standard technology and gaining increasing adoption rates, there are still many organisations that could be benefiting from it but don`t either due to ignorance or simply due to a perception that it is complicated to set up.
Donavan Page, Orion`s Accounting Manager, says: "E-billing basically means that you will receive your bills (invoices and statements) and reports (cost savings, call details, etc) via e-mail to a specific contact in your company. You receive your bills on the day we do our billing run so there are no postal delays. You have more time to process and authorise the invoices and thus you effectively have longer payment terms."
Clients that choose to save all invoices electronically only also save on filing space, but many still print hard copies for traditional record keeping.
Dispelling the myth of complication, the process is as simple as receiving the encrypted invoice as an e-mail attachment and saving it to the hard drive. The user double clicks the file, selects the "decrypt" option from the pop-up and the invoice automatically opens into a PDF file (Portable Document Format) which can be read by Adobe Acrobat (or other readers).
To ensure a smooth passage through the firewall and mail marshals, all or Orion`s e-billing invoices come from one specific e-mail address and have a specific filename extension. Once this is cleared, the mails get through 100% of the time without any problem. Attachments vary in size from 500k to 1Mb, depending on the size of the account and the number of documents in the encrypted file. This is a once a month e-mail only and is sent overnight to reduce bandwidth impact. Orion offers the option to receive all documents in a single file, or individually.
The documents are encrypted using 128-bit technology and are considered by SARS to be originals. Legislation requires that these must be archived electronically by the client on their own systems and that any printouts or decrypted copies are copies only. SARS may request to be provided with the original encrypted documents if the originals are asked for.
Jacques du Toit, Sales and Marketing Director at Orion says: "E-billing adds value that cannot be expressed or understood at the point of sale as it has nothing to do with the actual product or service being sold. However, it does reduce costs for everyone in the supply chain and it just makes for a better service overall. Furthermore, we have found that our customers prefer to be dealing with suppliers that are continually innovating and keeping up with business trends."
Orion has made it easy for its clients to test the e-billing process by putting up a page on its Web site where dummy invoices can be downloaded and opened. This is available at http://www.oriontele.com/customerzone/ebilling/index.asp
Clients can also register for the service easily by fax as one of the documents in the download set is a registration form.
Since launching the service in July this year, Orion has considerably reduced administration issues usually associated with billing runs and those clients that have adopted the service have reported improved efficiencies in processing accounts.
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