NHS body goes live with e-invoicing system

The Anglia Support Partnership (ASP), an NHS shared services organisation, is aiming to reduce operating costs through the introduction of an electronic invoicing service, which goes live today.

ASP deals with more than 425,000 invoices every year, each of which has to be scanned or entered manually into its workflow system, in order to match invoices with purchase orders.

However, it hopes to persuade suppliers to sign up for the Tradeshift service, a web-based business network that provides an electronic invoice service.

Submitting invoices via Tradeshift should reduce the time it takes to pay invoices. Suppliers will also be informed whether an invoice has been approved within five days of submitting it.

ASP has picked a handful of suppliers to go live with the system from today, and hopes to get as many as 1,000 suppliers signed up in the near future.

“The NHS has to find cost savings, and we believe this project can help create efficiency savings,” said Alison Balcombe, business development manager at ASP.

ASP currently deals with about 6,000 suppliers.

“We did a feasibility study, looking at other e-invoicing systems, but the [return on investment] wasn’t significant enough for us,” she told Computing.

If the scheme is a success, it will also enable ASP to cut some jobs, Balcombe admitted.

The Tradeshift e-invoicing service is free, as it looks to make money via additional subscription-based apps for enterprise users.

ASP provides support services to a number of NHS organisations in the east of England.