In a previous article, we explained why social media matter for lawyers. Lawyers have been slow adopters when it comes to social media, but by now, a clear majority of them have caught on. In the US, 76% of lawyers use social media for professional purposes, and 74% of US law firms are present on Social Media.

What are they using social media for? According to a recently published report, lawyers use social media for several reasons, including career development and networking (73%), client development (51%), but also for education and current awareness (35%), and for case research and investigation (21%).

When it comes to who uses what, the available statistics are not consistent when it comes to the actual numbers, so we’ll use approximations below. The published statistics, however, do all agree on the ranking.

  1. LinkedIn is the most popular network, with approximately two out of three of law firms reporting a presence on LinkedIn. It is the medium of preference for large law firms.
  2. Facebook comes in second place, with, depending on the published data, one third to about half of the law firms saying they have a professional Facebook page. (Up to 90% of lawyers are on Facebook in a private capacity).
  3. Twitter is third in the rankings, with approximately one quarter of firms using it. Of the four main social media, it is the one that is most used for research and current awareness.
  4. Google Plus comes in last, with 10% of firms reporting a Google Plus presence.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the oldest network, and was launched in 2003. It is intended for professional networking. It was the first, and still is the largest “business social network”, meaning that is meant for professionals.

Because LinkedIn’s main goal is professional networking, most lawyers feel comfortable using it. One report states that, in the US, 91% of firms of 100 or more attorneys have a presence in LinkedIn. They are followed by 85% of solo practitioners, 76% of mid-sized firms with 10 to 49 lawyers, and 63% of smaller firms with 2 to 9 lawyers.

On LinkedIn, you can create a profile, which reads like a professional résumé. You can add contacts to build a network of connections. There are sections for skills & endorsements. You can create pages (like a mini website). You can publish a blog and/or articles. You can set up groups where you can have discussions.

LinkedIn comes in a free and a Pro version.

Facebook

Facebook was founded in 2004, and has been open to public at large since 2006. It is the largest social media network: in the fourth quarter of 2016, it had 1.8 billion active monthly users.

On Facebook, as an individual you can create a personal profile, which is not the case for legal entities. Most law firms therefore create ‘Pages’, which are like a mini website on Facebook. Pages can be ‘liked’, and you can invite people to do so. It is also possible to create ‘Groups’ on Facebook, to which you can add people to interact with. Both pages and groups can have posts; you also can add videos, and photos or images, etc.

Interestingly, the most active lawyers on Facebook for professional purposes are solos at 48%, followed by 41% of lawyers from small firms (2-9 attorneys). Mid-sized firms with 10-49 lawyers were next at 22%, with lawyers at firms with 100 or more lawyers coming in last, at only 16%.

Membership of Facebook is free.

Twitter

Twitter was launched in 2006, and is one of the ten most used sites in the world. It is often called the SMS of the Internet. It is an online news and social networking service where users post and interact with messages, which are called “tweets.” Tweets are restricted to 140 characters, and, as a rule, can be read by everyone (unless you make them private).

When you sign up to Twitter, you can choose to ‘follow’ other people, which means their tweets will appear in your (news) feed. The idea is to create your own followers who then get your tweets on their feed.

The strength of Twitter, however, lies in the use of so-called hashtags which allow to perform fast searches. A hashtag is a keyword or expression (without spaces!) which are preceded by a #-sign. Using the correct hashtags will make it easy for people who are not followers to find your tweets. If, e.g., you wrote an article on divorce, you could use #divorce and #lawyer as keywords when announcing your article on Twitter.

The largest pool of lawyers using Twitter can be found in mid-sized firms, with 26% maintaining a Twitter account, followed by 25% of solos, 25% of large firm lawyers, and 24% of small firm lawyers.

Membership of Twitter is free.

Google+

Google Plus is an interest-based social network that is owned and operated by Google. It was launched in 2011, as Google’s response to Facebook. Its functionality is fairly similar to that of Facebook: you can have pages and groups, where you can make posts, upload videos (YouTube) and photos, etc.

Membership of Google+ is free.

Other Social Media

Apart from the social media mentioned above, lawyers also use Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest, mainly to share images and videos.

Instagram is an online mobile photo-sharing site that allows its users to share pictures and videos either publicly or privately on the app, as well as through a variety of other social networking platforms. It was launched in 2010, and acquired by Facebook I 2013. Membership is free.

YouTube is a video-sharing site. It was started in 2005, and bought by Google in 2006. It comes in a free and paid version.

Pinterest is a photo-sharing website where you can organize them in virtual pinboards. Its CEO Ben Silbermann summarized the company as a “catalog of ideas,” rather than as a social network. It was launched in 2010.

 

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In recent weeks, several articles have been published that proclaimed the death of the billable hour. One author declared that he could confidently state that the “traditional” hourly billing is dead. Another even wrote a eulogy. Most of these articles refer to the 2017 Report on the State of the Legal Market, released on 12 January 2017 by Georgetown Law’s Center for the Study of the Legal Profession and Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute.

The publication of the report was accompanied by a press release that stated: “The billable hour model of decades past where law firms experienced little pushback on rates or number of hours spent is effectively dead, and the traditional law firm franchise is increasingly at risk after a decade of stagnant demand for law firm services.”

In a comment on the report, the American Bar Association (ABA) Journal observed that “largely because of budgets and caps imposed by clients, 80 to 90 percent of law firm work is done outside of the traditional billable hour model, according to the 2017 Report on the State of the Legal Market.”

The report itself explicitly says: “One of the most potentially significant, though rarely acknowledged, changes of the past decade has been the effective death of the traditional billable hour pricing model in most law firms, (…) Plainly, the imposition of budget discipline on law firm matters forces firms to a very different pricing model than the traditional approach of simply recording time and passing the associated ‘costs’ through to the client on a billable-hour basis.”

The report found that the death of the traditional billable hour is due to the rise in so called “Alternative Fee Arrangements” (AFAs). The most common alternative fee arrangement, good for 65-70% of revenue in law firms, are capped fees, which means that cases are allocated a specific budget. Other alternative fee arrangements are being used, too, but amount to only 15-20% of revenues. Combined, this means that the alternative fee arrangements may well account for 80-90% of all revenues.

So, what are the alternative fee arrangements that are being used?

  1. a) Capped Fees: under a capped fee agreement, the client pays on an hourly basis, but the law firm agrees that the total bill will not exceed the capped amount. A cap is often accompanied by a minimum fee, which together are sometimes referred to as a “collared fee” agreement.
  2. b) Flat Fees / Fixed Price: the firm agrees to represent the client in exchange for a specified fee, i.e. at a fixed price, regardless of the number of billable hours. Because it can sometimes be hard to predict how a case will go, sometimes variations on the flat fee are used where parties agree, e.g., to a flat fee per stage, etc. Sometimes flat fees are combined with performance bonuses, where the law firm can charge an extra amount if the case is won, e.g.
  3. c) Contingency / “no cure, no pay”: in a contingency agreement, the law firm only gets paid if it wins the case. (Contingency agreements are illegal in some countries, like, e.g., Belgium).
  4. d) Holdback: traditionally, a holdback is a sum of money that remains unpaid until certain conditions are met. As an alternative fee arrangement, the law firm and its client agree on percentages of billable hours, where what is actually paid is determined by different criteria the parties set. (E.g., if the case is lost, only 75% of the fees will be paid).
  5. e) Blended Fees: with blended fees, the client pays the law firm a specified hourly rate, regardless of the individual lawyers’ hourly rates. This incentivizes the firm to appropriately delegate to less expensive attorneys rather than have its more expensive attorneys working at substantially reduced rates.
  6. f) Cost-plus model: the cost-plus model means that the client reimburses the costs the law firm makes, in addition to a reasonable profit.
  7. g) Subscription model: in a subscription model, the client pays the law firm a recurring fee to take care of all its legal business.

CICERO LawPack users probably know that it is conceived in such a way that it can work with these alternative fee arrangements.

 

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Since last month, the latest video tutorial ‘Creation financial year’ is online. You can instantly create a new financial year and start your bookings. The year transfer is in fact NOT required to start a new year, you can do this later.

With a year transfer you pass on the balance accounts to the next financial year. These accounts are the accounts of class 1 to 5. The final balance of the previous year, in this case 2016, must be final. We recommend that you do this in consultation with your accountant!

The final balance includes among other things the centralization accounts ‘customers 400,000’ and ‘suppliers 440,000’. You check the final balance, execute the year transfer, check for errors (which can be changed manually or remove and re-entered) and process the entire final journal entry, if completely accurate.

NOTE: The previous year transfers must be executed correctly, otherwise the sums do not match!

For questions about the year transfer you can contact CICERO Support: +32 2 272 03 80 or support@cicerosoftware.com.

In today’s article, we are looking at the version of CICERO LawPack that is optimized for mobile. This version was created at the request of our users and is a replacement for the mobile apps we used to have. The most commonly quoted disadvantages of the mobile apps were that they had to be updated frequently, independently of the full version, and that they didn’t offer the same functionality. Hence, the idea grew: since we already have a fully operational version of CICERO LawPack that uses a technology that in itself is mobile-friendly, we only need to create a separate layout that is optimized for mobile devices, and we solve both problems.

Our customers have determined our priorities for this ‘mobile optimized’ version. We asked them what functionalities they needed most frequently on their mobile devices. They were the ability to quickly retrieve information with regard to a contact (or a ‘relation’ as they are called in CICERO lingo), as well as the ability to quickly add a contact. Also high in demand was the job logger, i.e. the ability to quickly register a task one has performed, as well as an overview of the agenda. There wasn’t really a high demand for anything accounting-related, apart from the ability to quickly book a purchase, while one was making it.

And so we have started creating versions of our apps that are optimized for mobile. They offer the same functionality as the regular apps, with a similar user experience but with a slightly different layout. That layout adapts to the screen width of the device that you are using. Elements may be juxtaposed if the screen is wide enough, or stacked vertically if it isn’t, cf. the screen shots below. The mobile layouts work comfortably for screens that are at least 360 pixels wide. Let us have a quick look at the available modules.

Home page

When you log in, you arrive at the home page, which is called Overview. As the name suggests, it gives an overview of three different types of tasks in your calendar and financial agendas:

  • Notifications (= tasks in calendar)
  • Tasks to examine before billing
  • Purchase invoices to handle

Relations

The Relations application manages all the contacts or ‘relations’ of your office. It is the beating heart of CICERO LawPack, where all data from physical and legal entities are kept. In the mobile optimized version, the Add & Search options are available.

Matters

The Matters application handles the legal case management. In the mobile optimized version, you can quickly retrieve cases – along with all related documents, using various criteria.

Tasks

At present, 3 task management modules are available in a mobile optimized version:

  • With the Job Logger, you register each performance wherever and whenever you want, so you literally “won’t waste any time”.
  • The Overview option presents you with an overview of tasks on a specific date, or between two dates, as well as a gap analysis.
  • The Follow-up also offers an overview of tasks between dates.

What does the future bring?
We have been working on a CICERO webmail, that can collect mail from other mailboxes: Exchange, Google Mail, Yahoo, etc. This was done to accommodate some of our users who are using Macs or iPads. If email is collected via the CICERO webmail, the links to the other CICERO LawPack modules are available and it is easily possible, e.g., to mark a reply that is sent as belonging to a specific case file, and to log it in the job logger. We are currently testing the mobile optimized version of the CICERO webmail.

At present, 26 percent of law firms in the US have their own blog, according to the 2016 Legal Technology Survey Report, which was recently published by the American Bar Association’s Legal Technology Resource Center. The larger the firms, the more likely they are to have a blog: among firms of 500 or more attorneys, 60 percent have blogs, while at firms of 100 to 499 attorneys, 52 percent have blogs. In contrast, only 20 percent of firms of 2 to 9 attorneys have blogs, while just 12 percent of attorneys in solo practices have their own blogs.

So, what is a blog, and should you consider starting your own, if you don’t have one? The word blog comes from weblog (web log).  It is often defined as a regularly updated website or web page, typically one run by an individual or small group, that is written in an informal or conversational style. Blog articles are not academic papers. They’re meant to inform the general public.

There are many reasons to start a blog. Some see blogs as a platform for lawyers to offer insight and commentary. As such the articles are a form of free first legal advice, and facilitate access to justice. One lawyer described these blog articles as ‘helping the little guys’. Blogs also helped democratizing publishing and marketing for smaller and solo law firms. And by now, blogs have become an essential marketing tool: the legal market has changed, and the new legal consumers are content consumers. In order to turn website visitors into customers, you must turn them into content consumers first. And that is what you use blogs and social media for!

How and where do you start? You have several options, some which you could even combine. If you have your own site, then it makes perfect sense to use it to publish your blog as well. If you are using existing CMS software, like WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal, for your website, then you already have all you need, as these come with built-in blogging solutions. If you don’t use an existing CMS package, you should be able to stick to the technical solution you already are using, or, alternatively, you could opt to start using blogging software for your blog only.

If you don’t have your own website, and you don’t want to host your own site, you could use one of the platforms that are specifically meant for blogging: WordPress, Blogger, Blogspot typically are most used, but Tumblr, Medium, Squarespace, Ghost, and Wix also offer solutions. The comparison chart at https://startbloggingonline.com/blog-platform-comparison-chart/ offers a good overview of pros and cons of the different solutions that are available. If you are active on social media, you could even use some of those: both Facebook and LinkedIn, e.g., offer the option to publish articles. And finally, your ISP may even offer you a free blog. You don’t even have to limit yourself to one solution. Some people publish their articles on their blogs, as well as on social media.

What should you write about? Many legal blogs offer insight and commentary on developments in the law, business and consumer affairs. Others focus on case law and regulatory developments. Ideally, you should write about something that you are passionate about. Being passionate about a topic makes it easier to be inspired, and will make the writing process more enjoyable. Blogging shouldn’t be a compulsory chore.

After you have written your article, it is good practice to promote it on social media, so you can attract more viewers. (And if you promote you articles on Twitter, use hashtags for the most important keywords. For an article like this one, e.g., you could use #legaltech and #blogging).

The next question is how often you should update your blog with a new article. There is no magical success formula, as it both depends on your target audience, and on the amount of time that you can spend. For larger firms, an update frequency of two to three new articles per week is often seen as ideal. For smaller firms and solo lawyers, one or two new articles per month usually is enough.

Starting a blog might seem a bit intimidating at first. But it is something that grows you on quite easily. Once you have written some articles, you’ll get the hang of it, especially if you write about topics you are passionate about.

 

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The mobile revolution is a fact. In October 2016, worldwide, more websites were visited with mobile devices than with desktops. Indeed, Statcounter, a research company that tracks Internet traffic, reported that 51.3 percent of websites were loaded onto mobile devices, thus overtaking traffic from desktops for the first time ever on a global scale.

How does that affect you? In this article, we’ll focus on how to accommodate your mobile clients. More specifically, we’ll deal with what this means for your website and for your interactions with your clients. In a follow-up article, we will pay attention to some new tools the mobile revolution is providing for lawyers.

Let us start with your website. The first question to ask yourself is whether your website is mobile-friendly. How does it look when viewed on a mobile device? Is the text going out of the screen? Do the images and videos fit within the screen width? Can the navigation of the site be used comfortably on a mobile device?

Gone are the days of fixed width wide screen layouts. A quick look at available statistics teaches that approximately one in three website visitors has a screen width between 320 and 360 pixels! So, your website must be accessible in these lower resolutions. You may also consider using a font size that keeps the text readable.

A next item to pay attention to is the structure of your website. Are the menus and navigation touch-friendly and is the site easy to navigate on mobile devices? Are the menu options sufficiently large so they can be tapped with fingers? Mobile visitors also expect pages to load faster. Typically, pages that are optimized for mobile usage tend to be shorter, which means that – compared with how things used to be – you may need to reorganize and split up the content of your website.

Don’t speculate that you can postpone making your site mobile-friendly, because you are already losing potential customers. People using mobile device are 50% less likely to use your services if they find you through a website that is not mobile-friendly! And search engines like Google punish websites that are not mobile-friendly in several ways. Non-mobile-friendly websites get a lower ranking in the search results, which means your website will be harder to find. That ranking is lowered even more if the user who is performing the search uses a mobile device. (As a site note, Google also punishes websites that do not have a sitemap, disclaimer, or privacy statement, as well as sites that do not meet accessibility requirements). If you want to find out how your site is doing, Google offers a website where you can test it, and see if it is mobile-friendly by Google’s standards: www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

In previous articles, we pointed out that the new legal consumer prefers to work with lawyers who offer a client portal. In it, clients can have access to their data in a secure environment, and keep track of the evolution of their case(s). Preferably, that client portal, too, should be mobile friendly. And sometimes, they do more: CICERO LawPack’s client portal, i.e. the webview module, also allows existing customers to submit new debt recovery cases, e.g.

Finally, mobile media also affect how we communicate. 97% of the owners of mobile devices use it for texting through (social media) apps like Facebook Messenger, LinkedIn, Whatsapp, Skype, Google Hangouts, or other apps. Many use their mobile device for video chats. And 53 % of mobile users use their mobile devices to read and send email as well. Are the emails you send mobile friendly? Do the header and footer fit within the screen widths of mobile devices?

The mobile revolution is here. Make sure you don’t miss it!

 

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In part 1 of our legal case management software checklist we focused on the essential functionality that your software solution should provide. In part 2, we first pay attention to some optional modules and functionality that can be valuable for your firm. We will conclude with some general considerations with regard to the service providers and the services they provide.

Most service provides offer a range of additional modules, which often focus on specialized tasks, and therefore are optional. The reporting capabilities of a package are sometimes included and other times optional. They usually give a good insight in the maturity of the product. Further modules may focus on firm management, productivity, or logistics. Larger law firms will also be interested in knowledge management and data mining.

If your firm specializes in certain fields of activity, like, e.g. debt collection and recovery, mergers and acquisitions, liquidations, etc., special modules may be available that are specifically designed for those purposes. Sometimes other service providers offer such extended functionality, and you may have to work with more than one service provider.

If you are planning to use software solutions by other service providers, you must investigate whether these can be integrated in, or at least communicate with, your chosen software solution. We already gave the examples of third-party accounting software and optional specialized modules, but it also applies to more common scenarios. Most firms use Microsoft’s Office 365. And many people rely on either Gmail and Google Calendar, or on Outlook and/or Exchange for their email and calendar. If this applies to you, you will want a solution that offers a seamless integration with these applications as well.

These days, many companies use public cloud services (DropBox, Onedrive, Google Drive, etc.) for a number of reasons: to share documents or collaborate on them, to make backups of their data, etc. Does your software solution provide an integration with these services?

Security and Data are also important considerations. Does the software provide an easy user and permissions management solution with different levels of access? Are the data encrypted? Are email communications encrypted? Can the data be easily imported and exported? If you are looking at a cloud solution where the service provider hosts your data, what rights do you and the service provider have to the data? Can the service provider keep your data if you default on your payments, e.g.?

Thus far, we have given an overview of functionality requirements for your checklist. There are other important considerations, too. Apart from the functionality, you have to look at the User Experience (UX), e.g.: How intuitive and easy to use is the software? How are support and training organized? Are there manuals, tutorials, webinars or podcasts? When can the support desk be contacted and in what ways (phone, email, live chat, remote access, …)? The price, too, is of course an important consideration. Are there any hidden costs or costs that will increase over time? What about upgrades: what is the frequency, what are the conditions and what is the cost? Does the provider offer you a free trial period, and if so, for how long?

Last but not least, it is always a good practice to investigate to investigate the service providing company itself. What experience does it have in the field? How is its viability as a service provider?

Needless to say that CICERO LawPack scores well on the items listed above. It offers several optional modules and functionalities, that range from, e.g., management of the firm to debt collection and recovery, etc. It has extended reporting capabilities, and offers many of the other functionalities as well. It already integrates perfectly with Microsoft products (Office 365, Outlook, etc., but also Onedrive). Soon integration with Gmail will be a fact, too. It has an excellent support desk, and offers training, manuals, tutorials and webinars, etc. With CICERO 10 as a service, upgrades are included in the cost, so there are no unpleasant surprises. And INFORMA Europe, the company behind CICERO LawPack, has been around for 30 years, and has been the undisputed market leader during that time. So, you’re safe with us.

What do you have to pay attention to when you want to automate your law practice? We’re presenting you a two-part article with a check list. In the first part, we focus on the necessary modules and offer some thoughts on technology. In a second part, we will focus on optional modules and additional functionality.

Essential functionality overview

As a rule, any legal case management software should offer the following functionalities:

  • Contact Management
  • Case Management
  • Document Management
  • Task Management
  • Billing & Invoicing
  • Accounting
  • Client Portal

Contact Management

Lawyers don’t just deal with customers. They deal with a wide range of people and legal entities, in different capacities and roles. This is why many regular CRM programs won’t be sufficient. A decent contact management module is the cornerstone of any well-functioning law firm.

Case Management

As a lawyer, you work on cases. You need to meticulously keep track of everything that’s going on in the cases and the matters you’re handling. Typically, your case management is the central hub of your software that ties in with all other modules.

Document Management

There are two aspects to document management. On the one hand, as a lawyer you are likely to be confronted with thousands of documents, which may or may not pertain to one or more cases. You need a system to store, allocate and retrieve documents efficiently. On the other hand, as a lawyer, you constantly produce documents as well. That is the second aspect of Document Management: you need a module or app for document assembly (sometimes called an ‘act generator’). It uses templates that are filled out with the relevant data relating to the case.

Task Management

You also need to keep track of everything you have done, and everything you still have to do. Time Management in its widest sense covers several aspects, and often consists of several modules or apps. In order to increase efficiency, most programs work with predefined lists of frequently recurring tasks. Typically, there will be an app for fee management linked to that, that allows you to define default fees for specific tasks. You also will want the program to keep track of all the tasks you have already performed. As many lawyers work with a system of billable hours, a module for time tracking may come in handy, too.

You not only want to keep track of what you’ve done already, you also need to keep track of what you still have to do. As a lawyer, specific tasks often have to be performed at specific times, which is why you need an agenda and/or calendaring app.

Billing & Invoicing

Once you keep track of all the tasks you have performed, billing and invoicing becomes a piece of cake. Typically, the billing / invoicing module will not only allow you to create invoices. It also will allow you to generate statements, work with commissions, create intermediary overviews, etc.

Accounting

Ideally, your legal case management software should also have an accounting module that keeps track of all the payments you make and receive. Alternatively, your firm may want to use existing accounting software. If an accounting module is not included, then you should make sure there is a seamless integration between your legal case management software and the existing accounting software. And if you are dealing with third party payments, where you collect money on behalf of your clients, make sure the accounting module is designed to process those payments, as well.

Client Portal

As our articles on the new legal consumers indicated, these days a client portal is a must, too. A client portal is a place on the Internet where your customers can view, and possibly edit, their own data. Usually it’s a web site that is accessible with a browser, but it could just as well be a mobile app. In the context of law firms, client portals offer clients to ability to get an overview of their case or cases: what has been done, what still needs to be done, what has been billed, what has been paid, what third party payments have been received, etc. Often, a client portal will also offer the built-in ability to directly communicate with the client, allowing the client to ask questions.

An additional note on technology

These days, the majority of people are online on mobile devices. The software you choose should be able to offer web access, either through apps for mobile devices, and/or through mobile friendly web pages. Most leading software packages for legal case management are using cloud technology, be it private, hybrid or public cloud technologies, allowing you and your clients to access information from anywhere, at any time. Make sure you’re not choosing software that can’t be accessed over the Internet.

CICERO LawPack

Needless to say that CICERO LawPack offers all essential functionality. The current versions of CICERO LawPack all use cloud technology: all essential modules can be accessed using mobile apps (for iPhone/iPad and Android), or by browser. An overview of many modules can be found here: support.cicerosoftware.com/en/legal-practice-management-products/cicero-lawpack/. An introduction to our client portal (called Web View) can be found here: support.cicerosoftware.com/en/legal-practice-management-products/cicero-webview/

 

Starting from January 1st 2017, the Flemish Government expects its suppliers to use electronic invoices. An electronic invoice, or e-invoice, is an invoice that has been prepared, sent and received in a structured, electronic form that allows automatic electronic processing by a computer system.

Does this mean that you can send your invoice to the Government via mail as a PDF document? No, a PDF in itself is not enough, because it does not meet the structural requirements that will allow electronic processing. An e-invoice must be drawn up in a specific XML format, i.e., XML UBL 2.1. This is a standard that will be used throughout the EU. (For those interested, the mapping of the fields for this XML-format can be found here).

The Federal Government, the regional and the local authorities will all use the same platform (“Mercurius” / “Mercury”) to receive e-invoices. That way, you as a supplier, will have just one delivery point for your e-invoices.

In addition, a standardized network infrastructure, called PEPPOL, is being used that also allows companies to exchange (i.e. send and receive) e-invoices among themselves. Peppol is an international (European) network consisting of a framework of conventions, a standard format, and applications, to facilitate e-procurement and e-invoicing.

In other words, we are talking about one uniform system and format that will be used throughout the EU for all invoices and credit notes between businesses and Governments (B2G). Companies can also use the system to exchange invoices and credit notes (B2B). Obviously, this is a good thing. Electronic invoicing is fast, simple, efficient, economical and sustainable:

  • Fast: sending, receiving, and processing of data is done electronically.
  • Efficient: with e-invoices is it possible to automate processing the data, which has the added benefit of minimizing the chances of errors during processing. And if the order form was delivered electronically, it is also possible, e.g., to automatically verify whether the order and invoice match. Furthermore, this is a system that will be used throughout the entire EU.
  • Economical: invoices and credit notes can be exchanged and processed automatically, which saves you time.
  • Sustainable: you no longer have to print out any invoices. Large companies sometimes keep up to six paper copies of invoices. That is no longer necessary. E-invoices are a sustainable solution.

It is to be expected that most accounting packages will be adapted to work with e-invoices by January 1st. If you do not have a package with which you can create e-invoices, you have the option of creating an e-invoice online via the Mercuirus/Mercury portal. (More information, in Flemish, here).

At INFORMA Europe, we are busy with the integration of e-invoices in CICERO LawPack. Soon, it will be possible to create and send e-invoices from within CICERO LawPack. It will also be possible to automatically process e-invoices in the accounting application.

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