And yet has solved none of those. I was involved in the big effort to modernize EDI decades ago to use XML, then JSON, then REST-based approaches to simplify and encourage adoption of electronic invoicing, and yet none of it really had any effect. Emailing PDFs it is. Now the best solution is using RPA tools to automatically extract information from emailed PDFs to get them into the system. Yes, it's ERP to PDF and back to ERP using NLP and automation. Such as it is.
I hear You - I took part in many projects where the most important part was OCR for invoices. I have even seen a inner process in some local bank where they were OCR'ing their own documents that were printed first by other part's of this bank.
But here in Poland the government apparently found a solution to this problem - it's called KSeF and it will force all local entities to send invoices as XML through their portal first (there will be no other legal way to invoice, because the KSeF number which is generated by the portal, is required for every legal invoice, without they won't be able to deduct VAT).
Only time will tell if this will bring new era of electronic invoicing or just another failed government project.
Interestingly, the Hebrew word for money is "Kesef". Coincidence? Probably.
As for whether or not it will work, I think as long as Polish companies need to invoice non-Polish companies and vice-versa, trying to standardize in this manner will be challenging.
It could, if it was offered to small customers. Big buyers can insist on EDI. Small ones usually cannot and their systems are not expecting it, because EDI is "Enterprise scale" and not SME-scale.
Do you know of a QuickBooks-scale accounting system that does EDI easily?
