The electronic invoice (FE-AP) solution for government purchases has already delivered “25 million euros in savings to the state until the end of the first half of 2022,” an official source of the Ministry of Finance told DN/Dinheiro. Vivo. . In total, more than two thousand public entities and more than four thousand suppliers have joined this billing system. This is the first balance sheet of the FE-AP, which was implemented in 2020, the first year of the pandemic.
The Public Administration Shared Services Entity (eSPap), which manages and implements the FE-AP, estimates that by the end of 2023, the accumulated savings will increase from 25 million to a value of more than 30 million euros, “corresponding to the costs that public entities no longer make, as, by using the centralized solution of eSPap, they no longer buy software licenses and services related to the management of electronic invoices,” clarifies the ministry under the supervision of Fernando Medina.
In addition, the government estimates it will save “three million euros in working hours in 2022, which increases to about six million euros in 2023”.
Integrated into the Simplex program, FE-AP is “a platform created and managed by eSPap that enables the use of electronic invoices in public contracts, by public and private entities, in the issuance, transmission, receipt and administrative and accounting treatment” , explains custody .
As of July 31, more than 2,000 government agencies were using the FE-AP and more than 4,000 government service providers had already sent electronic billing documents to government agencies through this electronic solution. According to data collected by Finance, “the number of suppliers adhering to this system has increased since 2020: 352 at the end of 2020 and 2202 at the end of 2021”.
The number of documents processed and the associated value has also grown steadily: “As of December 31, 2020, 153,053 documents had been processed, totaling approximately EUR 199 million, and last year the number tripled to 564,864 documents, the corresponding global amount of which increased to approximately 1,630 million euros, and in the first seven months of this year alone, FE-AP covered 514,887 documents, with a total value of 1,570 million euros.
The solution for electronic invoices was approved by the Council of Ministers on 20 December 2018 by the first government of António Costa. It was scheduled to come into effect on January 1, 2019, but a series of accidents pushed the implementation of the system into 2020.
At present, all governing bodies and public institutions are required to issue invoices through the FE-AP. The Decree-Law stipulated that the same obligation would be extended to co-contractors of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from 1 January 2021. The college has already postponed this date twice. In June of this year, the Council of Ministers approved the extension of the deadline to December 31 of this year. In other words, it will not be mandatory for co-contracting SMEs until 2023.
The Treasury Department emphasizes that “More than a legal, fiscal and IT obligation, the FE-AP is based on the standardization, optimization and procedural automation of expenditure and revenue cycles, eliminating administrative bureaucracy at different stages of the process.” reduced.” . billing”.
Micro, small and medium-sized companies with public contracts will be required to join the new system from January 1, 2023, after the government has already postponed this date twice. The FE-AP was approved in 2018, but was not implemented until 2020.
Source: DN
