In the United States, the enforcement of tax is not centered on invoices. Political opinions aside, this helps explain why the US government does not explicitly regulate e-Invoicing, unlike countries that mandate VAT.

The US approach to tax recognition of electronic business documents places less emphasis on the transaction and more on records retention. The IRS tax regulations drive companies to define an inspection and quality assurance program evidenced by regular evaluations.

According to Ariba’s tax advisor and partner, TrustWeaver, the document storage solution should:

• Ensure integrity, accuracy, and reliability
• Prevent and detect change
• Have a retrieval system and include indexing
• Support legibility and readability through both hard and soft copies
• Cross reference the general ledger

Another area of US regulation that affects e-Invoicing is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), which requires companies to ensure high levels of information control. The security of important business information is a key enabler of such controls, and the controls available within the Ariba solution are among the techniques trading partners can use to facilitate SOX audits.

Both paper and electronic transactions can conform to such regulations, but paper copies are not needed in the case of electronic transactions. In fact, Ariba users' overwhelming experience is that electronic documents provide much greater business control and ensure the authenticity and integrity of invoices better than paper documents. When your auditor reviews the business controls available in Ariba, the auditor will strongly agree.

For a summary of Ariba’s business controls and general approach, see the Ariba Help Center article Advanced Invoicing: Ariba helps trading partners ensure invoice authenticity and integrity.

Ariba also publishes easy-to-understand technical invoicing information for customers, tax advisors, and systems auditors in the Ariba Network Guide to Invoicing.