The terms electronic invoicing and electronic billing are often tossed around interchangeably. Technology users, solution providers, and industry experts alike all seem to be confused. E-billing and e-invoicing actually describe slightly different processes.

According to a recent entry posted on finextra.com, e-invoicing focuses on the business-to-business market while e-billing has more to do with the business-to-consumer space.

More specifically, electronic invoicing is when an organization’s supplier sends them an invoice electronically that can be automatically entered into their accounting system. The idea is that the accounts payable process is being automated too, not just the receipt of the invoice.

On the other hand, electronic billing is much more simplistic, which is why it is more common in the business-to-consumer arena. E-billing is simply when a vendor provides a digital copy of a paper bill to their customers along with an option to pay electronically. There is no automated integration into the customer’s accounting system. This could simply be a PDF in an email.

After clearing up the confusion, the author of the finextra piece, Michael Wright, also laments the lack of strict naming conventions in the electronic invoicing and billing space. “As an industry we can't even agree on whether we include the hyphen or not,” he says, “but 'e-invoicing' looks much better than 'einvoicing,’ whereas 'ebilling' is preferred to 'e-billing'.”

Click HERE for the full article.