Ascertia Invoice Signing (Jan08)

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© Copyright 2001-2007 Ascertia Ltd.

Adding Digital Signatures to e-Invoicesand other e-business documents and workflows

November 2007

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Why Sign Business Documents?

• Enhances trust in important documents / data

• Prevents changes to documents / data

• Meets legislative requirements

• Enables legal acceptance of documents

• Ensures traceability, audit and compliance

• Ensures clear sign-off and approval

• Substantially reduces print and delivery costs by enabling electronic delivery

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Digital Signature Usage

• Digital signatures have important properties:– They conclusively bind the originators identity to the data– The signers status can be confirmed as acceptable or not– They confirm when the document was signed – They confirm the document has not been changed – They show this is not an accidental / draft document– The originator cannot deny approving and sending it– They can be checked at a future date

• Signatures should be verified before documents are accepted in receiving systems– To confirm all the points above

• Documents should be notarised on receipt– To avoid disputes about content and time of receipt

• Well proven standards-based interoperability

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What are the benefits of signing e-invoices

Comply with the EU VAT directive and applicable local legislation

Safeguard corporate identity and documents

Mitigate the risk of fraud committed using a corporate identity

Be able to easily and effectively confirm the accuracy of invoices sent to any third party

Enable easy retrofitting of a security ‘signing’ server, that offers self contained management

Provides a significant ROI - Reducing costs such as paper, toner, enveloping & postage

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E-Invoice Market Drivers

• The EU VAT Directive requires:– Guaranteed authentication of origin– Guaranteed integrity of content– Guaranteed readability during the storage period

• EU Digital Signature Directive ensures that digital signature can be enforced in a court and have equal weight as hand-signatures

• National legislations also demand digital signatures – in some cases EU Qualified Signatures which have more stringent requirements

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Key Business Advantages

• Issues on originator identity are removed– The invoice is signed by an individual or corporate entity

that can have its identity verified and current status validated

• Dispute resolution costs are removed– The invoice is confirmed as an authentic, formal document – It has EU legal weight via a signature that can be verified

• Electronic Invoices save a huge amount of money in paper, printing, enveloping and postage costs – An ROI can be produced within weeks!

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Solution Features

• The Ascertia ADSS Server can control– Which document types to sign – The appearance of the signatures– The location of the signatures– The legal entity signing – Which pages to sign

• The recipient can use Adobe Reader to verify the digital signatures

• In-bound processing systems can use ADSS Server to verify digital signatures

• In-bound documents can be notarised/ timestamped

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(a) Watched Folder mode

ADSS Server can look in various folders and sign documents with varying profiles and selected signatures

PDF, XML, File SIGN ADSS Signer

ERP system output documents

to sign / verify

Signed Documentsfor sending

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(b) Web Services Mode

ADSS Server can be on the same server or a different server platform and sign any type of document or data

PDF (or XML, File) Sign / timestamp

Financial Application

ADSS Server

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(c) Invoice Workflow Approval

VerifyTimestamp& sign final VAT invoice

InvoiceReview

Approve

Sign internal workflow documents

Review/Release

VerifyCountersign internal documents

Transmit

ERPCRMECM

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(d) Email Gateway Mode

ADSS Server is being enhanced to offer an email interface that can accept documents as email attachments, sign them and then send them on for one or more business legal entities + Optional notary archive

Sign and optionally timestamp PDF, XML, File attachments

Email Gateway

ADSS Server

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ADSS Server – Business Uses

• Add signatures to outgoing documents/ data– Including timestamps and ETSI long-term signature formats

• Used to notarise received documents and data– To avoid ‘you changed it’, ‘we sent it 5 days ago’

• Use when displaying documents to customers to ask them to sign / approve a final document– E.g. procurement, internal approval

• Use to verify signed received documents– Does the signature verify, is it a trusted identity

• A combination of the above!

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Summary – use ADSS Server to

• Enhance trust in corporate documents

• Prevent changes to documents

• Meet legislative requirements

• Enable legal acceptance of documents

• Ensure audit and compliance

• Ensure clear sign-off and approval

• Substantially reduces print and delivery costs

• Secure internal documents and workflows

• Secure external document / data interactions

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Rod Crook

[email protected]

+44 1256 895416

Ascertia Invoice Signing (Jan08)

Economy & Finance

Transcript of Ascertia Invoice Signing (Jan08)