Transcript for "What's Going on Over There? The Impact of Global E-Invoicing Mandates on US Multinationals": Hello. I am Christian van der Wolk from Solvos, and I originally recorded this webinar with, our partners at KKMG, Paula Smith and Lauren Tallman, with the objective of helping US companies navigate the global e invoicing landscape. And while we recorded this session several months ago, the core insights and the strategic frameworks that we discuss are, still very relevant. I would say they're probably more relevant than ever because, some of the macro developments, that we're discussing in this webinar are just accelerating, and that is just creating, this sensation of a never ending number of announcements of new mandates for e invoicing, continuous transaction controls, and various other forms of tax digitization. Governments really want to get your data, and they will get into your data, get into your transactions, big big time. This is a global, acceleration that is happening, but it is actually particularly timely for Europe, because in Europe, the so called VIDA, the VAT in the digital age legislative package, was approved actually, it was approved just weeks before we recorded this webinar, which is interesting, and we already talk about it in great detail. Paula and I explained how Europe is adopting Latin American style continuous transaction controls, for instance, but with critical differences because this is politics. This is policy. This is law. No two countries ever adopt the same, the same, approaches. And between Europe and Latin America, it would be a mistake to think, that they are even remotely similar. There are certainly directional similarities, but you've got to understand the difference between LatAm's clearance models and Europe's essential, prohibition of real time government approval. But Europe has added a couple of other things, namely centralized and decentralized mandatory networks, so the exchange of the data in addition to, real time reporting or what we call continuous transaction controls is getting a lot more attention in Europe. And beyond Europe, we also talk about more, additional approaches across the larger EMEA, the Europe, Middle East, and Africa regions. So we touched on examples of Egypt, for instance, with electronic signature hardware requirements. We talked about Saudi Arabia as an example with data localization requirements with storage. And it just comes back to this notion that you've got to be prepared as a starting point to acknowledge that every country has its own different coordinates on the compliance spectrum, and and we talk about what that compliance spectrum looks like, to help you understand how to best navigate all that complexity. So in this webinar, Paula, Lauren, and I, we discussed regional differences. We explained why frameworks like PEPPOL matter for your EMEA operations. PEPPOL is probably the the best known example of what makes Europe very different. By the way, Asia is definitely heading in that direction too. And we share strategic recommendations from multinational organizations. We cover everything from data quality challenges to system landscape considerations. So, what are the kinds of things that you need to watch out for and how do you, how should you think about soliciting the help of a KPMG to make sure that your data quality is on the level that it needs to be for the right kind of implementations, but also then also how do you think about all of those systems that, process and store invoices already today in your in your business across your accounts payable, your accounts receivable? How do you think about getting that data to flow through that and to flow through to the right tax administrations all in compliance with this extremely complex ever changing landscape? To make sure that, it's not just a video, but you can also, take something home and read. On your couch, we've prepared a companion brief that highlights core developments since this recording. So you'll have both the strategic framing and the conversation from the, webinar session, but then also, an actual, printout with latest updates to inform your planning. So I would say, you know, whether you're new to this jungle of e invoicing, acronyms, alphabet soup, and, and strange developments that never feel quite intuitive to, anyone wherever you sit in a in a in a business or whether you're actually already quite familiar with this, but you want to refine your existing strategy or help explain some of these parameters to your, colleagues in different parts of the business, I think this, this webinar will provide some really solid context to you that can help you, make more informed decisions. So let's dive in. Hi. Welcome, everyone. We're excited for today's presentation. We are just gonna give it about a minute or two here to get our last couple people who will join, and then we'll dive right in. Okay. I think we can go ahead and kick off here. So thanks everyone for joining. Today's webinar is on the topic of what's going on over there, the global impact of invoicing mandates on US multinationals. I'm Lauren Tallman. I'm global invoicing specialist and senior manager at KPMG in the indirect tax technology practice, and I'll be facilitating today's session. I do apologize for the state of my voice, so let's keep our fingers crossed. It stays for for today's whole session here. Now I am joined by Paola Smith and Christian VanderVolk. Paola is a managing director in the indirect tax technology practice at KPMG as well. She's been with Affirm since 2011, specializing in implementing tax solutions, including e invoicing for global organizations. She also supports her clients internationally and has a strong background in Latin America. Christian, we're we're glad to have you here today as well. So Christian is responsible for intertax marketing strategy at SOBOS and has been an expert active expert in public policy, business processes, and technology around invoicing and the broader domain for almost three decades. So a lot of experience with our speakers today. So just a couple of housekeeping items. The core content for today's session will be about thirty minutes followed by a q and a. So if you have any questions, please go ahead and submit them in the q and a window. And as time permits, we'll go ahead and address those. But if we don't have time to get to yours, we will be sure to reach out. Today's webinar is being recorded and is gonna be available on demand via the same link that you used to join. So because of this, your audio as an audience member is going to be muted. Now we're also gonna be asking a couple of polling questions throughout, so keep your eyes open for those. And if you have any technical issues, please go ahead and use the help feature for assistance. Alright. So let's take a look at today's agenda. We're gonna start off by reviewing the main trends in e invoicing and indirect tax digitization, followed by regional developments, and then the game changers that are the open networks, along with challenges in, enterprise software ecosystems and vendor selection, and finally, best practices for invoicing strategy, and then we'll segue into that q and a. So let's go ahead and dive in with our first polling question here. Now the question is, what region does your organization operate in? And you can go ahead and select multiple options here. So North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific. We'll just give it a moment here, while everyone goes ahead and logs that response. Alright. Looks like we got a couple of responses there, so we'll keep moving on. So a lot of North America. We've got Latin America and Europe. So a little bit of a spread here. A couple people have with operations a little bit everywhere. Alright. So let's go ahead and dive right in with our first topic. Now I want to kick off by defining the scope of this conversation to understand key trends. There's a lot of debate in the indirect tax field that focuses on central and transformational role of the invoicing, but everything is not an isolated phenomenon. So the question here is, how can we describe the broader landscape of indirect tax digitization? Christian, do you wanna kick us off? Christian, it looks like we're having some audio issues on your end where your sound is not quite coming through here. Okay. Well, we'll let Christian work on that in in the background. And in the meantime, Paola, let's let's pivot over to you and then get your input here. Yeah. Sure. So, you know, the landscape of indirect tax digitization is really marked by a strong emphasis on electronic invoicing, which it it really led to the adoption of technology across business throughout the years. So let's think about the LatAm region, for example. We're talking about a pioneer region with real time reporting mandates. Electronic invoicing primarily started with the focus to achieve transparency, reducing tax evasion. This was really the primary reason of electronic invoicing in some of those Latin American countries. Tax authorities, they needed to ensure tax collection. So it started with electronic invoicing in LatAm, and it was quickly followed by electronic reporting mandates, including eaccounting in certain countries like Mexico and Brazil. And now we can see a trend that quickly followed across the globe with the countries in the EU and other regions implementing some type of electronic invoicing. So we can see an evolution of the electronic invoicing of something that started back in my 10 in the year February. The digitization of indirect taxes across the world brought innovation. It brought technology adoption across businesses to comply with electronic invoicing requirements. So, you know, if we go back to the question, what is the actual broader landscape of indirect tax digitization. To me, it's really the call for the automation of processes. Companies needed to implement the controls to ensure consistency across the various work streams. And let's think that e invoicing, as mentioned, it is not an isolated thing. It's not an isolated system. It is integrated into the broader company's ecosystems. Think that invoicing is the end of the process, and it requires a tremendous amount of data, an extensive amount of data, specifically in the LatAm region, which, you know, we are really gonna be talking about data today as well. So back to you, Lauren. Thanks, Paula. Let's see if we've got Christian back on the line here. Alright. Let me test the Alright. You're coming through, Christian. Cool. Great. Sorry about that. I had three different, microphones, and all seem to be working just prior to the event. So I I really think, actually, most of the probably good, got a good thing, that all I could get started. She said pretty much everything. Let me just say on a slightly higher level of abstraction. My observation is the way to think about this is not to get too focused on e invoicing. The problem by if you focus just on e invoicing and this I see this a lot, is that you get this sort of focus on what I think of as the plumbing. It's an IT problem. Let's go go do this thing for this country. There's a mandate. We don't have that much time. And that leads to two various problems, and I'm sure we'll touch on a bit during the event today. But think about it as on a higher level, we move away from something that, you know, has basically been driving the enforcement of indirect law for for pretty much as long as indirect law has existed, which is the interpretation of generally drafted law and declarative statements. Right? So very much powered through the actual taxable person, the the business, in their day to day operations with the possibility at the end, of course, for tax administrations to audit, but but that was never a very good method for the tax administration. So what tax administrations are trying to do, as I said, is move away from declarative statements and interpretation towards the world of specification and always on controls of actual source data. And there's a lot beneath what I just said. But, essentially, what the tax administrations are doing really here is to try and remove the human factor from tax enforcement on on both sides of the equation, by the way. So Paula mentioned automation. The idea is really that as business processes, economic operations happen, the information that is exchanged between trading partners and then also recorded by trading partners in its original form, unchanged, is shared in real time in a structured, standardized, authenticated form with the tax administration so that humans don't basically get a chance to touch any of the data and do all those things that humans do, like making errors, potentially commit fraud, or, you know, other other things that have happened in the past around, for instance, corruption, as well. So it's a it's a revolution towards always on source data, and, yes, a lot of it is about the invoicing, but there is a little bit more to it than that. And you can see some of these additional things here on the slide, and Paula mentioned a few of them, already as well. Yeah. Yeah. And the tax authorities are taking some interesting approaches to enforce compliance with these transformations. You, of course, have the standard legislative penalties and, like, I mean, those can add up pretty quickly as well. I mean, for example, Italy, they're posting the penalties for noncompliance of not issuing invoices per invoice. So that penalty is 250 to €2,000. So if you have high volume transactions and invoices you're being issued, that can add up pretty quickly. But we're also seeing more more extremes as well. For example, over in Egypt, we're seeing litigation and criminal penalties. And one of the common practices in in Latin America is if you are having violations of of these requirements from the tax authorities, they'll shut your businesses down, which I mean, it it's not a threat, which if we have operations in The US and Europe, we're we're used to kinda seeing that in the legislation. But, that to for that to come to fruition, you know, it it can be a little bit difficult. We we see a lot of things have to happen in order for business to be shut down, but but in Latin America, it's quite commonplace. And the tax authorities are pretty pretty active with that, you know, with deactivating digital stamps and signatures, which are required for invoicing. And so that means you can't issue those invoices so you can't complete those transactions. You know, we also see them pretty active on Instagram. Panama has a pretty active Instagram, the tax authority does, and they've got the some interesting posts of the businesses that they closed. But beyond that and and those ramifications from the tax authority, you also have to impact your customers. So if you are in the business to business transactions and you're not supplying your customer with those valid invoices, that means they won't be able to recover VAT. So now you're facing major issues with your customers as well. So I think there's a lot of components here from both that broader perspective like we talked about, Christian, and then, you know, really drilling down onto those invoicing impacts as well. Okay. So let's go ahead and jump to our next polling question here. What is the main challenge you anticipate your organization will need to overcome in order to compile the invoicing? We've got a couple options here, and that's, you know, your system landscape complexity, requirements vary variations across the regions, your data accuracy, or, you know, the difficulties with cross functional collaboration. So just give it a moment here for people to lock lock their responses. Okay. We've got some feedback on on that poll. So systems landscape complexity, yep, requires variation across regions. So a little bit of everything here as well, but it sounds like systems landscape complexity is winning out. Alright. So diving into our next topic here, I wanna take a quick tour of the world's region. So we've mentioned this previously, and Paolo said this before. LatAm has been a pioneer in e invoicing, but there are significant differences across the region. So can we take a couple of moments and and minutes to just go ahead and discuss these differences and how the individual countries align or don't align with regional trends? Paola, do you wanna kick us off? Yes. Sure. So, you know, like I said, LatAm started in the early two thousands and, again, with the primary focus on tax compliance, driven primarily to reduce tax evasion and giving more visibility of tax transactions to the tax authorities and perhaps really giving the history of those countries. The majority of these countries, if not all, have government controlled systems. I think this is really today as we see electronic invoicing, is spreading around the world, you know, the mandates. This is really one of the main differences. The Latin region has a government controlled system when you compare to the other regions. Something else as a difference, you know, to the other regions. The LatAm has a a high adoption rate, which means, we are leading the way with Chile, Mexico, Brazil, being the first ones, but it's it's almost every single country in the region has a mandate. And, Lauren, I like what you said about, you know, the business shutdown because it's not an option not to issue an electronic invoice. You know? It it's mandatory. You do have to issue. And if you don't, yes, you have a business shutdown and you have a government controlled system. One of the you know, another key difference, strict regulations offering, requiring, some type of authentication to issue the invoice, whether it's specific, you know, some type of stamp or a digital certificate to be able to issue that invoice. Something else, an extremely complex landscape when it comes to electronic invoicing regulations with an extensive amount of data. I was actually surprised now in the poll question because data accuracy was only 90%. Mhmm. And, you know, data is key when it comes to electronic invoicing submission. And a lot of these countries in LatAm, they require an extensive amount of data, and we're not gonna see this with some of the regions that are adopting the PECO framework. I'm actually gonna revert it to Christian here a little bit. Christian, I remember in one of our previous presentations, you mentioned, like, an invoice in Brazil. I can't remember the amount of fields that is required that you comply with. Do you remember? It's 1,800, potentially. Yes. Yes. So 1,800. I mean, it's it's really crazy to me. You know? And and lastly, the main characteristic, again, it's a centralized system. The invoice, they must the invoices, they must be submitted and validated before sending to your customers. So there is a greater government involvement, which means that the tax authorities, they receive the invoice before the buyer does, And the the goods can't leave with the seller's establishment, you know, before the invoice isn't approved by the tax authorities. This is really a big difference because, as you can see, there's no seller and buyer relationship here, not really a seller and buyer exchange. We're gonna talk about this later on. You know, I really see with the other regions, there is an evolution of the electronic invoicing today. What started in LATAM is now spreading globally, but let's say it's spreading globally in a more innovative type of way, perhaps more efficiently. I don't know. Back to you. Let's see what Christian says about that. Well, I, okay. So I, yeah, I think you already gave a pretty good overview. Let me let me just highlight one thing because, what will the what will an event about e invoicing and tax digitization be without talking about VIDA at least for a little bit? You might have heard this term if you don't know what NET what it stands for. It stands for VAP of the Digital Age, and it's a package introduced by the European Commission, actually, approved just a few weeks ago to go forward to and and what the way to think about this is it's a it's an adjustment of the European value added tax legislation that basically, I would say, implements or introduces the Latin American continuous transaction controls and the invoicing methodology. But with a few tweaks, as you said, Paula, one of them, you'll see this both in Asia and in Europe, and we'll talk about this later again. There's more attention paid to the actual and and more regulation about the interaction between the supplier and the buyer. So the transaction itself, the interchange of the invoice is regulated as well. The other change that you see in Europe and also under VIDA, this is quite explicit, is this clearance, this dependency on the government approval in real time before you can carry on processing, your invoice or carry on with any business process really until the invoice is approved. That clearance is prohibited in Europe. So under VIDA, there there will be real time reporting, but not real time clearance. I think those are the two main differences. As I said, Europe and Asia, in that sense, resemble each other somewhat. But if as you can see from this slide and maybe to close on this topic, very important to know, no two countries, even neighbors on this map, in practice, really, look much the same when it's when we talk about the implementation of the invoicing. Different datasets, different formats, different processes. You know, in Solvos, we have a a long, long, long list of of of items, across which different countries differ, and it's really quite it's really quite, shocking to see just how many differences there are if you go down to a lower level. The trend is towards continuous transaction controls, real time observation of transactions, but country legislation still differs wildly. And that will continue even in Europe even though Vita does introduce a fairly decent amount of standardization, there will still be variations among the member states as well. Right. And and there's differences in how those mandates are going about that implementation and, like, how the the process is gonna work. I mean, even within your like you mentioned, I mean, beyond the clearance process, there there's also the delivery of those e invoices. So, I mean, we have Italy with our mandate that exists, and the tax authority manages the delivery, and there's several different methods of that. The French mandate that's coming into play in a couple years here, 2026, 2027, there's that re recent shift in the last couple months where they had p p they have which is a tax authority platform, and now that's actually gonna be the partner team that even generalization platforms. The PDP is responsible for e invoice distribution, so it's no longer the tax authority responsibility. So even in Europe, we're seeing differences with that. And across the regions as well, I mean, in in Asia, we have the Malaysian mandate, which is, Christian, like you mentioned, more of that preclearance process where the tax authority does have to approve an e invoice versus India where they're really looking at that data in order to secure a unique reference number from the tax authority. And if we look at The Middle East, we have Egypt too. They were pretty interesting when they implemented their mandate, particularly for b two b transactions for e invoicing because they actually introduced a hardware requirement for electronic invoicing. So tax authorities taxpayers had to go out and secure this piece of hardware, called a hardware security module or a USB token in order to apply the digital signatures for e invoices. And, you know, at least look at Middle East as well, you have Saudi Arabia, and they had specific security requirements for the solution itself. So they explicitly, you know, prohibited default passwords and login user activities, and you have to prevent data changes and all these things for the actual solution itself. So these e invoicing mandates and the differences across the regions go beyond just build requirements. There's so many different things around how the mandate is structured itself. Alright. Well, I think the audience has a pretty good idea of what's going on globally here. So let's go ahead and do another poll question before we take a look at open networks. So question here is, how prepared is your organization to comply with the existing and growing number of invoicing mandates? Few options here. You're not sure. You have not thought about it yet. You're relying on existing invoicing methods. You've begun exploring solutions. You have fully explored solutions, but you're not yet implemented, or you're already prepared and and compliant with the invoicing mandates. So just give it a moment here to log a couple responses. Alright. Let's take a look at those results. Okay. So bit of a split here. We've got 35% who's not not quite sure, and another another 30% here that have begun exploring solutions, and looks like some of you are quite prepared. So, bit of a split here on those responses. Alright. Let's take a look at our third topic. So the introduction of regulatory requirements and supplier to buyer exchanges has transformed invoicing. Now the question here is, how is interoperability through PEPPOL or similar frameworks shaping this landscape? Paola, do you wanna kick us off? Yes. So that that really goes with what I mentioned earlier, the evolution of electronic invoicing from Latin to the rest of the world, from a a centralized system to a four corner model. Right? So when we talk about the four corner model being the seller, the buyer, and their respective Pepo, access points. So the Pepo network is indeed shaping the landscape of electronic invoicing. It's really promoting standardization, but to me, most importantly, something that we don't see in the LatAm region, which I mentioned earlier. It's really enhancing the supplier to buyer exchanges. With the PEPO framework, there is a shift towards more standard data perhaps, more quality of data consequently. So, again, the electronic invoicing was the starting point in LatAm to reduce tax evasion. Some may think it was to promote automation. It did the consequently, but, you know, it started to reduce tax evasion given the history of those countries. Now the way I see in the rest of the world, you know, it's it's, like, I see it a little bit differently. Electronic invoicing is really coming to promote innovation, to to promote the digitalization of the tax function, to promote automation of processes. And the adoption of the the PEPO model enables a better quality of data, which consequently, it it helps as well enable a better automation of the entire process. Could this bring a change across the world? You know? So we saw the start of electronic invoicing in LatAm, but now this evolution of how the electronic invoicing is done across the world, you know, from LatAm to the other regions. Now could the opposite happen what is happening, the the way that the electronic invoicing is handled in the other regions? Could LATAM start adopting that model to have a process that is more standardized, to have a process like PEPPOL that would bring a better quality of data. Well, let's see. You know? Let me give Brazil as an example. We have a tax reform, that is going to be effective in 2026 that is really bringing simplicity to the complex tax system in Brazil. You know, from five different tax types, we are gonna get it to, perhaps two or three different tax types. But most importantly, we are now mimicking the characteristics that we see with the VAT system across the world, including the calculation type. So that could also mean a change in the electronic invoicing format, an alignment with global standards like PAPO. You know? I'm a person that, as a Brazilian, I would love to see that. Back to you, Lauren. Thanks so much, Paula. I think those are great points. Christian, do you have anything else you would like to add? No. I think Paula said said most of it. I mean, by the way, the slide we're looking at here is just a different way of looking at the the first slide we used here. Because these two dimensions, as I said earlier, the regulation of the relationship between the supplier and the buyer, and the regulation of the relationship between the taxpayer and the tax administration, The latter coming from Latin America, I would say if you want to simplify perhaps the former things like that, all coming from Europe initially, but also being very actively adopted in Asia. Those two things are coming together, and I do believe we are, over the next ten, fifteen years, going to see a move towards the top right hand side of this spectrum, right, whereby both of these dimensions in some shape or form will be regulated. But just to repeat, right now, every country in the world has a different set of coordinates, and and usually not just one on this, on this spectrum. I also want to just briefly come back to something Paula said, because for for some of the some of the participants today, this might not be obvious. Paula drew drew, very brightly, a link between the use of that poll or similar frameworks, which you call a four corner model, and automation and data quality. And I think this is something that perhaps we need to just clarify real quickly. The four the four corner model essentially means that every taxpayer in the in the economy, every business has an access point, an access point being, generally speaking, a service provider that is that supports a full stack of standards in such a way that it can interconnect and does interconnect with any other access points. So it can create a network of networks through this interoperability scheme. What happens when you do that is that particularly small and medium sized businesses, and don't forget that more than 99% of most countries are SMBs, go from in very in in many cases being, you know, typing in invoices into portals of their large trading partners or sending each other emails, all of a sudden get an opportunity to participate in the digital economy with automation and exchange of standardized data. And that kind of very quickly flips to the adoption by SMB specific software, of automated processes both for AP and AR. And the result of that, and this is what we started with or at least I said earlier, is that, of course, all of a sudden the vast majority of businesses in an economy no longer use manual procedures and that raises the quality of data, right, which is tremendously important. Obviously, for the tax administration, they are using legislation to force just that effect, but, of course, also a great benefit for all of these economies. Yeah. Which I think is, you know, can be a little bit scary for the audience to hear and draw those parallels, especially if we look at our polling questions, and one of the challenges that people responded with was data quality. So the importance of that is just continuing to increase. Alright. Let's go ahead and jump to our last polling question here. So just a little bit about our audience here. What which of the following best describes your role within your organization? Do you sit within the finance department, so a PAR? Are you tax, IT, legal, or another department not listed here? So I'll just give a moment for people to go ahead and respond to that. Alright. Let's see. Okay. So a lot of finance and tax, attendees today. Quite a few tax attendees. Fantastic. Alright. Let's now if we go ahead and pivot to our next topic here, what challenges exist within ERP ecosystems, and how do e invoicing service providers fit into the broader enterprise processes and systems landscapes? So little bit of a mouthful with that question there. But, Paola, do you wanna kick us off there? Sure. So, you know, the the challenge to me and I know it was only 90% of the response, but it relies on data. Just like in any tax implementations, ERPs require data localization. Master data is key, and it's no different, like I said, than any other tax implementation. The only thing is that, here, as tax authorities are requesting an extensive amount of data to be report to be reported, we needed to ensure that that data is available. And we also needed to ensure the data quality, to ensure, you know, the quality of such data in the ERPs. And, you know, let's let's think that the ERPs, they are financial systems. They manage company data in several areas, whether it's accounts payable, accounts receivable, logistics, inventory, trades and customs, and so forth. So if you think about it, it was never built with the intention to support tax. They were never designed as network endpoints, and that is really the challenge. Companies needed to make sure that they choose a solution that integrates with their ERP to submit their electronic invoice. And you have to think that there is, there is a transfer of data. Right? There is a data migration from one system to another. So you needed to ensure that that data, in fact, exists in the source system, whether it's coming from an ERP or another system that you have. These are great points, Paolo. I mean, the data accuracy. I feel like our our clients, that's one of the number one challenges that they have as well. Alright. Christian, do you wanna provide some input on this topic as well? Yeah. Just briefly, I mean, if we talk about, enterprise processes and, enterprise software, we already touched on it, but I think it's important to say maybe maybe for a long time, I started my presentations with a slide with two sort of Greek gods battling each other in the cloud with the you know, one of them representing the private sector and their digital transformation and the government coming in, using, you know, their superpower, which is legislation to force, you know, certain aspects of their digital transformation on onto businesses and that creates quite a bit of friction. And this is something that you see translate to the day to day reality of all of businesses. What what we see a lot, and I think this is now coming to, the point where it is much more visible, is a lot of, a lot a lot of businesses, larger businesses particularly, have very specialized software for different categories of buyers buyers, different trading partners, already have various forms of electronic data I need to change, procure to pay, or API automation, you name it, types of processes. There are many types of transaction management software that are being used, And people are starting to really feel that, you know, that friction sort of in real life with all these questions that are coming up about, you know, how do I should I now throw all of this out and, you know, buy compliant e invoicing sort of our search or somewhere? And and and, you know, one of the one of the things that we often talk about with our customers together, of course, with with our partners here from KPMG is, like, you should really be very careful, in thinking about this because, obviously, the intent cannot be that you throw out, you know, software that you might have already invested millions into for your quick peer to pay process, for instance, and then replace that just because the tax administration now has an opinion on your on your invoices. Right? You really need to think very hard about how you get those two worlds to work together. And one of our pieces of advice is always to make sure that, you know, you you should insist on the freedom to choose your own business software and then make sure that complies as opposed to all of a sudden, you know, making this 180 degree kind of shift towards, you know, compliance becomes the only criteria. That's a that's a dangerous thing, to lead with. Mhmm. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, you you touched right on it, Christian. Just the complexity of customer systems landscapes here and just those constant upgrades and implementations and the changes of just not only trying to comply, but all the other aspects that that the companies and the transformations that they're going through. And even, you know, considering any of the manual interventions that might be in, that that can be challenging as well and, you know, a lack of consistency of the various departments and how they're they're using those existing systems too. You know, the these invoicing implementations, it it is not so siloed. Like, you you cannot go in with blinders on the you know, we're only gonna focus on invoicing. Because as you dig into that data, it's really driving companies to reassess their systems' landscapes. And like we talked about, you know, these requirements are just gonna continue to evolve. So the data necessary to be shared with the tax authorities are going to continue to expand. So it's just going to increase that at the importance there of those audit trials and reconciliations. I mean, if you have data coming from the multiple systems, how are you gonna reconcile what was reported to the tax authority with all the details coming through from your multiple systems? So it becomes a huge reconciliation exercise. And so, really, it becomes a a key strategy that that taxpayers need to make sure they're focusing on, and that's, you know, outlining the priorities for these transformations over the next few years so that they can efficiently work with those invoicing providers and get them the the needed data. Alright. So we're getting towards the end of today's session. And I think, you know, based on today's discussion, you know, the audience can see that e invoicing is transforming into our tax tax management. So before we close out for today, the last topic I'd like to chat about here are what are the key recommendations for multinational businesses formulating their strategies today. Christian, do you wanna dive in? Yeah. Maybe I'll just repeat something that I said earlier, which is, you know, don't don't go in, and we see this unfortunately quite a bit, you know, draft a request for proposal for one vendor that will do all your automation and all your compliance in all countries in the world. As much I would like as as I would love to say that that vendor exists, it doesn't. Right? Those business efficiency, business process automation, and compliance are two very different domains. And today, it is not realistic to expect the global coverage in both of those areas managed by one single vendor that just is not reality. So the the way I'd like to think about this is in the future environment, which is a cloud based environment across the board pretty much for for all enterprise software. Think about loosely coupling these domains, right, whereby your business efficiency, business process automation, your ERP, and compliance can independently work each in their domain, but work together, so that you can have business process efficiency and compliance at any given time. Second thing maybe real quick is it is so important we talked about data and we talked about enterprise systems. It is so important to do a comprehensive inventory of all of the systems and data flows that are affected by these different mandates. And when I say different mandates, it's not just the invoicing as we have stressed a few times, it's the broader tax digitization space from all of the things will happen with periodic returns that will become prefilled returns, but also things like eAudit, SAFT, and the other types of requirements that fit into that same bucket of always on tax, as as I mentioned earlier. Last thing about all of this is what I would say is you might have heard people already talk about this because it's becoming quite a an an obvious thing that wasn't maybe just a way a year or two ago. In some countries, the tax administration knows more about you than you know about yourself, certainly in real time. Right? And and that is, of course, not good because with real time audit and with things like prefilled tax returns, and it might not just be the indirect tax, it could also be corporate income tax. You don't want to be in a position where you completely lose control over your data and all you can do is accept whatever the tax administration defines as your tax liability. So keeping nearer visibility, right, with the tax administration, making sure that your data is consolidated, as you said, Lauren, reconciled in real time to make sure that you stay in control and you continue to have a a good basis to, have a conversation with the tax administration is really important. I think those are great great points, Christian. Paula, do you wanna, add a couple comments as well? Sure. Yes. No. I, you know, I think Christian, covered, a lot of great points here. There's a few things to highlight, in order to be prepared. I'm gonna you know, just from a from an implementation standpoint, you know, with the view as the implementer, to me, it's really perform a data quality assessment. A fit to get analysis, it becomes essential. Identify and address data issues with all existing systems and all existing systems like, Christian mentioned that are going to be affected by the electronic invoicing, to ensure accurate submission. And the same is true for the system landscape. You know? You should hold, you should actually map the current invoicing process to identify areas of improvement in the to be landscape. And, of course, an evaluation of the data flow with the systems integration. Because sometimes, your data is not centralized into just one solution that is going to feed your electronic invoicing vendor solution. You may have all these satellite solutions around, and they have data that you need as well. So you needed to ensure that that data is somehow going to be sent, going to be migrated to the electronic invoicing, solution to that system. So it's really doing an evaluation of data, feed to get analysis according to your business footprint, according to what is required to you in those countries that you have a presence, and evaluating your system landscape. Yeah. I think those are great great points, Paula. And I'd I'd add to that as well as making sure that companies are clearly outlining the road map of what's coming down the pipe, where do they need to take immediate action, and and make sure that they do have a steering committee as in place as well to ensure that you can have that global viewpoint and consistency and efficiencies. And, also, consider that cross functional collaboration. I mean, as you the audience can see, there are so many different pieces that invoicing touches within our organization. So it goes beyond tax and IT, and this is finance, trading, customs, HR, etcetera. So just make sure you you have the the key people identified and that cross functional collaboration. Alright. Well, I know we covered a lot of topics today, so I'll just quickly summarize our key takeaways before we dive into our q and a. You know, first takeaway I'd say is the the shift towards e invoicing is part of that broader move to reduce human intervention and tax processes. They're really focusing on that real time automated data exchange between businesses and tax administrations. Secondly, like we chatted about, there are significant regional differences within e invoicing. And while LatAm has paved the way, you know, each region and country is gonna have their own unique requirement. So it's going to be crucial for businesses to understand these differences to maintain compliance. In regards to those, open networks, so frameworks like PEPL are gonna be critical to enhancing the interoperability, particularly in those regions where automation is limited. Fourth takeaway, integrating invoice and enter existing ERP systems is going to pose challenges. So companies need do need to make sure they're strategically reassessing those system landscapes and aligning those digital transformations with the regulatory goals and ensuring data accuracy. And our fifth takeaway with strategy, I know we touched on several several points here, but really making sure that you're not relying on a single vendor for all needs and conducting a thorough assessment of the transaction management systems and prioritizing collaboration across those departments and and also making sure that, you know, continuous tax data management is gonna be a key must have for strategy. Alright. So, just at at the end of today's session here, we did have a question come through that I do want a quick pose. And, Paola, I'll punt it over to you for this one. So in Latin America, in Brazil, how will e invoicing impact the local payment processors? Will they have invoice requirements, or will it be the selling platform? Yeah. That's a good that's a very good question because that's actually changing in Brazil right now. There's a few dependencies to that question on the nature of the transaction itself because it was never a requirement in Brazil for the local payment processor to actually issue the electronic invoicing. That's changing with the tax reform for foreign vendors, doing business in Brazil. So, you know, if you are a foreign vendor with no establishment, no physical presence at all in at all in Brazil and you are selling to a final consumer, the payment processor they they shifted the