Invoicing is crucial for every business, but traditional invoicing methods are error-prone and time-consuming. As technological advancements revolutionize business processes, electric invoicing (e-invoicing) has gained prominence globally, and Malaysia is no exception.
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Mandatory Electronic Invoicing in Malaysia
E-invoicing is a seamless exchange of information between suppliers and buyers. It revolutionizes traditional paper-based invoices by transitioning to digital formats.
In line with Malaysia’s commitment to digital transformation, the nation implemented mandatory e-invoicing to enhance efficiency and reduce tax costs. The Malaysian tax authority, the Inland Revenue Board, and the Malaysian Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) will implement e-invoicing gradually to ensure a smooth transition. The mandatory e-invoicing will cover all B2B, B2C, and B2G transactions.
In 2024, mandatory electronic invoicing will commence for taxpayers with an annual turnover of more than MYR 100 million. However, the IRB also welcomes organizations that fall outside the scope of e-invoicing but are ready to undertake the implementation. Subsequently, regardless of size and revenue, it will be applied to all businesses, including B2C, B2B, and B2G.
RPA – Embrace comprehensive invoicing automation in Malaysia for business efficiency
E-invoice processing
Malaysia is making great strides in embracing technological advancements to welcome the e-invoicing mandate. As a business opting to thrive in the ever-evolving business landscape, you should prepare ahead for e-invoicing.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has emerged as a game-changer, revolutionizing how businesses deal with e-invoicing.
To process an invoice, an RPA bot will typically take the following steps:
- Receive traditional invoices needs to be converted into e-invoices
- The virtual bot starts to read the email and download the invoice
- The traditional invoice automatically extracts data fields
- The virtual bot automatically logs in to the e-invoice issue system
- Input data then wait for the e-invoice to be issued
- Finally, the e-invoice is automatically sent to the buyer by email
Purchase invoice processing (validation)
The case studies below will reveal how businesses optimize purchase invoice processing with a comprehensive automation solution. Purchase invoice processing is done after issuing e-invoices.
#Case study 1
Challenges
- 1.8M invoices per year with 100% of manual work for processing
- 75 full-time accountants (180,000 working hours per year) for invoice-processing
- High employee turnover at Finance and Accounting Service Team
As a branch of the leading retail corporation in Asia, Central Retail in Vietnam (CRV) has to deal with massive volumes of invoices per year (around 1.8M), which accounts for 180,000 working hours per year of 75 FTE in the Finance and Accounting service team. In addition, the repetitive tasks might lead to an increase in employee turnover year by year.
Solution
Aware that RPA is the most potential rescuer enabling CRV to deal with repetitiveness underlying the invoice handling process, the client teamed up with akaBot – a comprehensive RPA solution and created a brand-new workflow with bots mimicking human activities.
Results
- Automate 75% of the invoice-matching process
- Reduce operational time by 50%
- The invoice processing speed also doubled compared to manual processing before, corresponding to 1.8 million invoices/per year
- Save 90,000 hours/year
- Save $500,000 within 5 years
#Case study 2
With a large number of 40,000 input invoices each year, Daikin Vietnam’s accounting staff must process and store manually by copy-paste operation, and continuous assessment to avoid duplication. During the payment processing, accountants must verify information including the buyer’s name, address, and invoice codes. Manual handling leads to delays and wastes time and human resources.
To reduce the burden on the accounting department, Daikin Vietnam decided to implement UBot Invoice. The results were impressive: Reduce invoice processing time to 30 seconds/1 invoice, helping Daikin Vietnam save 130 working days/year. With RPA core technology integrating with other advanced technologies such as AI, and OCR, UBot can accurately check basic information of invoices including tax code, address, buyer name, and digital signature of the sellers, and create reports according to user requirements.
To learn more about the whole process of comprehensive invoice processing, from issuing invoices to checking invoices, watch the end-to-end process demo here.
Conclusion
In Malaysia’s dynamic, fast-paced market, enterprises need strategies to adapt and operate flexibly and efficiently, especially with the mandatory e-invoice regulation in 2024. E-invoice processing was the focus of the C-Talk Malaysia #2 event on March 20, 2024, organized by akaBot. C-Talk is an event series by akaBot exclusively for C-level managers, Heads of DX, and IT Leaders in enterprises, focusing on strategic discussion and experience sharing to accompany corporates and organizations during their digital transformation journey. In 2023, for the first event hosted in Malaysia, akaBot provided insight into automation and its impact on business through the topic ‘Optimizing Finance Operation with RPA’. The gathering explored strategies for enhancing financial performance across sectors like finance, banking, retail, and more, emphasizing the application of suitable automation methods.
References
E-Invoicing Malaysia: Everything You Need to Know About It
Mandatory CTC Electronic Invoicing model in Malaysia as of August, 2024
Mandatory Electronic Invoicing in Malaysia
Understanding the process for exchanging e-invoices in Malaysia
Enhancing Business Efficiency Through E-Invoicing Solutions in Malaysia (Explained!)
What are the most effective RPA use cases for invoice processing?
akaBot (FPT) is the operation optimization solution for enterprises based on RPA (Robotic Process Automation) platform combined with Process Mining, OCR, Intelligent Document Processing, Machine Learning, Conversational AI, etc. Serving clients in 20+ countries, across 08 domains such as Banking & Finances, Retails, IT Services, Manufacturing, and Logistics…, akaBot is featured by Gartner Peer Insights, G2, and ranked as Top 6 Global RPA Platform by Software Reviews. akaBot also won the prestigious Stevie Award, The Asian Banker Award 2021, etc.
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