The Office of Public Works (OPW) is an Irish Government office whose primary function is to support the implementation of government policy. The OPW advises the Minister for Public Expenditure & Reform in the disciplines of property and flood risk management.

In accordance with the EU Directive on e-Invoicing (2014/55/EU), government departments and public sector bodies were mandated by the Irish government to be able to receive e-Invoices in Peppol format from suppliers. The OPW decided to run a pilot project with two suppliers, Bourke Project Management and Hayden & Murphy to see how introducing Peppol would affect their Accounts Payable (AP) processes and to prepare for the future on-boarding of all suppliers. As neither Bourke Project Management or Hayden & Murphy had their own integration or capability of creating BIS3 Peppol invoices, the OPW required a Peppol partner who could create a cost effective solution for low volume suppliers.

The OPW engaged Celtrino, Ireland’s leading e-Invoice and EDI solution provider, to set up a Peppol Access Point for receiving e-Invoices and also to provide a Peppol compliant e-Invoice portal that their suppliers could use to create and send invoices and credit notes to the OPW. Celtrino also setup an AS4 connection for the safe and secure transmission of all invoices and messages.

Implementing Peppol e-Invoicing has helped OPW create efficiencies in their Accounts Payable process by immediately receiving electronic invoices into their back end system. As all invoices are now fully electronic, they no longer need to manually scan pdf’s into their backend system. The project has also helped the OPW plan for the future onboarding of all suppliers.

For the suppliers, Bourke Project Management and Hayden & Murphy, they were able to use the Celtrino Peppol Create Invoice Portal to send their invoices and credit notes to the OPW. There was no requirement to purchase additional hardware or software development fees involved for the suppliers. The portal also enables suppliers to have full transparency on the transmission of all invoices, send notifications when something is wrong, and to receive acknowledgment that each invoice was successfully received by the buyer . It has helped to reduce costs, eliminate paper, reduce query times and speed up the flow of goods and services.