Burns Total Invoice Settlement Service

Total Invoice Settlement

"The time has come for CFOs to take a leadership role to educate other C-level executives on the merits of SCF and its potential contribution to the organizations' bottom line."

- Aberdeen Group, Inc.:
'Get Ahead with SCF'

Service Highlights

beX Total Invoice Settlement is a comprehensive system allowing

Buyers to extend supplier payment terms without unduly affecting the supplier's working capital requirements
Buyers to settle all approved Supplier invoices with a single, consolidated, payment
Suppliers to request immediate settlement of one or more outstanding invoices at near-wholesale discount rates

By offering an integrated Invoice Settlement and Supplier Finance capability potential issues such re-characterisation of the invoice as a 'loan' can be avoided. Moreover, the Buyer enjoys:

Greater visibility of the invoice settlement process, giving
Greater control over invoice settlement

Neutrality

beX Total Invoice Settlement has been specifically designed to be:

Finance Provider neutral - There are no dependencies on any one financial institution. Our finance partners act as a principal in regards to settling and financing invoices.
'e-Invoicing Provider' neutral - Although the Program is operated and managed using the Burns Business Exchange platform, it is not necessary that the Buyer uses beX to receive invoices from suppliers. Indeed, the buyer may already receive supplier invoices via another e-Invoicing platform. In this case it is entirely possible for invoice approvals notifications to be handled between the Buyer, their e-Invoicing provider and Burns and for the Financing applications to be handled between Burns and the e-Invoicing provider.
'Invoice delivery method' neutral - It is not necessary that invoices are delivered to the Buyer electronically. All that is required is that the Buyer can implement a simple electronic Invoice approvals notification mechanism for approving paper or electronic invoices
Multi-lingual - The finance application screens can be presented in any language
Multi-currency - Invoices can be settled in any currency with any discounts being based on the applicable LIBOR/Euribor rate

Qualifying Invoice

A "qualifying invoice" is any invoice that the Buyer unconditionally and irrevocably approves for payment. Invoices may be submitted electronically via the Burns Business Exchange (beX) system or as paper documents.

Invoice Status Tracking

The Buyer notifies beX, electronically, of the changing status of submitted Invoices using a specially designed Invoice Status Tracking message. Suppliers will be able to track the status of their invoice submissions via the beX web portal. E-mailed notifications will be sent to each supplier whenever an Invoice Status Tracking message is received from the Buyer. Other notification mechanisms may be added and may include RSS feeds and SMS text messages.

Invoice Approvals

Every invoice approved by the Buyer is notified to beX using the Invoice Status Tracking message. The message is processed by the beX platform and is used to create an Invoice Settlement Notification message (detailing how much to be paid, in respect of what, to whom and on what date) which is then passed to our Finance Provider who schedules the invoice to be settled on the normal invoice settlement date specified by the Buyer.

Requesting 'Finance'

Suppliers with one or more approved invoices may use the beX portal to view the current value of their invoices. If they wish, Suppliers may also use the beX portal to select invoices for discounted settlement and to formulate a request for immediate payment by clicking a 'Pay Now!' button on the beX portal.

Based upon invoice(s) selected by the Supplier, beX Total Invoice Settlement will produce a Request For Settlement message to be transmitted to our Finance Provider. Note: beX can either produce a single Request For Settlement message in response to individual Supplier requests or can produce a 'bulk' message covering requests from many suppliers to be transmitted to our Finance Provider at agreed intervals (e.g. hourly, 3 hourly, end of day, etc.).

beX performs all the necessary discount calculations using data (e.g. daily LIBOR rates, discount spreads, etc.) provided by our Finance Provide as regular data 'feeds'. Suppliers requiring discounted settlement of invoices must complete and authorise their Request for Settlement by 5:00 pm GMT. Any 'Requests' completed after that time will be processed on the next working day at that day's rates.

Arranging Settlement

Our Finance Provider will arrange for each supplier, for whom a Request For Settlement message has been received, to be paid

in the amount,
to the bank and account; and
on the date

specified in the message.

Our Finance Provide will confirm the status of each Request For Settlement with a Funding Status message to be sent to the beX system. Note: The Funding Status message can be sent in response to individual or 'bulk' Requests for Settlement or can be produced as a single 'end-of-day' batch message.

On normal invoice settlement date, the Buyer will arrange a single funds transfer to the appropriate financier to cover the full amount of all invoices being settled by the Finance Provider (plus agreed service charges) on that date. At this point, the Buyer will update their back-office systems to show the relevant invoices as having been paid.