The true cost of email invoicing and a comparison with alternative invoicing methods

Abstract

Nowadays, many billing companies are changing from paper invoicing to email invoicing. The main argument for doing so is that email invoices are free of charge. Although sending email invoices seems not to generate direct costs for the biller, it has not yet been evaluated, whether there are indirect costs related to factors such as imprecise manual data entry in digital banking. Our research has the aim to identify the true costs of an email invoice and to compare these with the costs for paper invoicing and eBill.