Is SME-sector competitiveness important? If governments consider SME-sector competitiveness important (65% of corporate turnover and all growth in employment come from them) they should do something about red tape and automation of administrative processes.
The key to the latter is fast migration to structured e-invoicing - paving the way to automated accounting, real time payments, automated VAT-reporting, automated cash flow estimates, cost- efficient anti-grey economy measures etc.
As this should be a no-brainer, the next question is how to get there fast. Our experience:
1. Make sure that banks offer e-invoicing as part of e-banking and file transfer services. Only banks have the power to address the corporate mass market cost-efficiently all the way to secure payment automation and account statement based accounting.
2. Set deadlines for accepting paper and e-mailed PDF invoices
3. Implement cash based accounting as recommended in the VAT directive.