Research and Development of a Cost Efficient Finvoice B2C Billing Solution

Abstract: Electronic invoicing can help companies cut up to 80% of their billing costs and with all of the benefits it offers, it is really starting to gain ground in the European market. Finland is one of the European countries who are far ahead in the field of electronic invoices and more and more Finnish companies are moving over to it. However, often it is the larger companies that have the expertise and resources to implement such invoicing systems while smaller companies are more cautious with the adoption of new systems or standards. So how much does it take for a small company to develop and implement their own Finvoice B2C billing solution? Most well known billing software providers in Finland are already providing Finvoice invoice support with their software.Some banks are even offering online portals for companies to send electronic bills. However, all these products and services come with a price. This thesis will look further into the Finvoice billing standard and the effort needed to develop a Finvoice invoicing solution for a small company. This will be carried out with the goal of gaining knowledge in the field of electronic invoicing and investigating the requirements to develop a cost efficient billing solution for a small size company. A prototype of a Finvoice billing solution has been developed and handed over to Unihost, a Finnish webhosting company, which allows the company to browse, filter, search, view, and generate Finvoice invoices from their bills while cutting costs, and with the help of some added modules to the system, they will have close to a fully automated e-billing solution. This thesis also investigates the current price levels of the Finvoice services provided by Finnish banks. A comparison will be presented on how the various costs add up for a full year of sending and receiving electronic invoices.