An article by Arthur Waller, CEO and Co-Founder of Pennylane.
While electronic invoicing will gradually be compulsory for all companies between 2024 and 2026, for chartered accountants this measure will be synonymous with technological upheaval, as rightly pointed out by Virginie Roitman, President of the Order of Experts- accountants of Paris Ile-de-France. It is imperative for them to take up the subject now in order to adapt as soon as possible to this change in the DNA of their profession and to develop their services. Reinventing yourself, compensating for the elimination of traditional missions such as accounting entry, is a real challenge which can however lead to great development opportunities. As the first advisors to business leaders, it is also essential for chartered accountants to immediately prescribe to their clients the most advantageous solutions for this digital transformation, even if they mainly or exclusively support VSEs-SMEs. .
An innovative measure but which raises many concerns among accounting professionals
The generalization of the electronic invoice for companies will bring with it a transformation of the profession of chartered accountant. For these number professionals, this development has various advantages. It will constitute a formidable material means to meet the expectations of their customers and an opportunity to deploy new services and skills to support the performance of client companies. The majority discourse is nevertheless that of concern: the entry of supplier invoices represents on average 30% of the working time of an accounting employee. Chartered accountants may rightly ask themselves: how to avoid a fall in the firm’s fees of the same order? What should I use all this time freed up for my collaborators? These questions arise from the lack of two important pieces of information. Thanks to electronic invoicing and real-time data transmission, accounting firms will finally be able to provide their clients with what they have been asking for for years: proactive advice. From now on, accounting staff will have access to financial information at the same time as the companies concerned. More time spent waiting, collecting and processing the supporting documents: their analysis can be done day by day and in a more thorough way. Then, other information that should not be taken lightly, the electronic invoice supposes the arrival of a third party in the relationship between a company and its firm: the PDP service provider, responsible for transmitting the invoices to the tax authorities, and on which the firm will also depend.
The opportunity for the accountant to strengthen its position as a trusted third party
Thus, each French company will have to choose its PDP service provider: the company that will provide its invoices to the tax authorities and also to its accountant. From this observation, two risks are identified for chartered accountants. The first: that of dealing with a multitude of different service providers and, therefore, touchpoints and processes. This is what is likely to happen if the chartered accountant does not show himself to be a prescriber of a solution to all of his clients. The second: that of having to deal with a service provider who does not understand (or is not interested…) in the issues facing accountants and companies. In other words, a service provider who only works for one of the stakeholders: the State. We do not know what information the PPF (the PDP of the State) will claim from invoice editors. What interests the State is the VAT so we can be sure to find this information in the flows but only have this information (and to date, the State does not oblige to provide other information ) constitutes a missed opportunity, both for companies and for accountants. For example, in the case of a trader, to analyze his competitiveness the accountant needs to know not only the VAT but also the nature of the product concerned and its quantity. Without these three pieces of information, he cannot perform sector analysis.
OCR technology is currently not developed enough to extract these three pieces of information reliably, so only the VAT is entered in the accounts. With the Factur-X format, it will be possible to extract all this data in a perfectly reliable way and therefore to carry out this sector analysis. It would be a shame to deprive yourself of them because the PDP service provider does not communicate them!
Chartered accountants therefore have every interest in being prescribers in the choice of the PDP service provider for their clients and this means looking into the question now. It is essential to study the various existing service providers, to choose one that is agile, that will be able to store and exploit this influx of data, and to understand how it works in order to be able to support customers in its handling. If the profession does not take up the subject, it is a safe bet that other players such as banks will and they will not wait until 2026! For chartered accountants, this should also be seen as an opportunity to strengthen their position as trusted third parties with VSEs-SMEs, by supporting them in their procedures and their change policy with a view to a digital transformation that promotes their development. and their competitiveness.