E-invoicing: The clock is ticking for Life Sciences companies

E-invoicing is a fast-approaching reality for Life Sciences companies. What was once a finance efficiency topic has become a board-level compliance and transformation priority. Automating accounting systems—as well as eliminating paper, manual entry, and errors—are key benefits for Life Sciences organizations.

With major Life Sciences markets including Poland, France, and Germany introducing B2B e-invoicing through phased approaches over the coming years, the opportunities are huge.  Whilst B2B e-invoicing is already permitted but not yet mandatory in many other EU countries, Life Sciences organizations need to closely monitor country-specific announcements and timelines to ensure they are not caught out.

What’s driving e-invoicing in Life Sciences? 

The answer to that is simple: a powerful combination of regulatory pressure, rising compliance risk, and the need to simplify highly complex operating models. But there’s more to it than that:

Regulatory pressure is intensifying across Europe

EU initiatives such as VAT in the Digital Age (ViDA) are accelerating the move toward real-time digital reporting and structured electronic invoices. This will make e-invoicing the default for intra-EU B2B and B2G transactions from 1 July 2030. Plus, many countries have already introduced or are in the process of rolling out national e-invoicing and e-reporting requirements. However, these are often with different formats, platforms, timelines, and clearance models, creating a fragmented and fast-moving compliance landscape that cannot be managed sustainably with manual processes or PDF invoices.

Compliance risk is higher than in most industries

Life Sciences companies face stricter scrutiny from tax authorities and regulators due to high transaction volumes, complex pricing models, regulated products, and government or hospital customers. Errors in invoicing can quickly lead to delayed payments, penalties, blocked goods, or audit findings.

Cost pressure and the need for efficiency

Margins are under pressure from rising manufacturing costs, supply chain disruption, and increased regulatory burden. Manual invoice handling, dispute management, and country-by-country compliance solutions are expensive and difficult to scale.

The challenges for Life Sciences are complex

Right now, Life Sciences companies face the same core e‑invoicing challenges as other multinationals. However, the pain points are amplified by strict regulations, complex pricing, and global supply chains that are omnipresent throughout the industry.

• Data, systems, and integration: Legacy ERP and finance systems in pharma, biotech, and medtech are often not designed for real‑time, structured e‑invoices, leading to integration gaps, rejected invoices, and parallel manual workarounds.
• Regulatory and cross‑border complexity: Life Sciences companies sell into many countries, each with different e‑invoicing formats, schemas, platforms, and timelines, while mandates are evolving rapidly and often with short notice.
• Operational and process issues: Moving from batch invoicing to near real‑time clearance/validation can disrupt order‑to‑cash and purchase‑to‑pay, with invoice rejections delaying shipments, revenue recognition, and payments to critical suppliers. Plus, it can add extra process steps and control points.
• Supplier, customer, and partner readiness: Supply chains in Life Sciences rely heavily on distributors, wholesalers, CMOs, CROs, and hospitals, many of which are at different levels of digital maturity and use incompatible formats. Aligning all these partners creates additional cost and coordination effort.
• Cost, skills, and change management: Upfront investment in e‑invoicing platforms, ERP upgrades, and continuous monitoring is high, and competes with R&D and other strategic priorities in Life Sciences. Building internal expertise on both regulation and technology, is a persistent barrier.

The benefits  are much more than “No PDFs ever again”

Yes, you read that right. E-invoicing brings more advantages than no more PDFs sitting menacingly in your inbox. For Life Sciences companies, e-invoicing can:

1. Lower processing cost: Replacing paper/PDF invoices and manual keying with structured, automated flows removes printing, postage, filing and rework. With traditional invoices often estimated at several euros per document, the costs that can be saved with e-invoicing will be incredible.
2. Faster cycle times: Digital validation, matching and approvals shorten the time from invoice issue to booking and payment; with the potential of processing and payment being accelerated by several days. This can also increase goodwill between customers as their invoices are processed far faster than standard.
3. Fewer errors and disputes: Automated data capture and validation dramatically reduce human error, leading to fewer price/quantity disputes, credit notes and reseller chargebacks in complex Life Sciences contracts. E-invoicing is also seen as a way to reduce VAT risk, improve data accuracy, and create a transparent, auditable transaction trail across borders.
4. Stronger VAT and tax compliance: In Europe, structured e-invoices aligned to standards such as EN 16931 make it easier to meet national and ViDA-driven digital reporting obligations to produce accurate VAT returns with less manual effort.
5. Easier audits and traceability: Rich, standardized invoice data provides a clear audit trail, which supports inspections around transfer pricing, discounts, rebates and public-sector tenders that are common in Pharma and MedTech.
6. Fraud reduction: Near real‑time, structured transaction data improves anomaly detection and helps reduce fraudulent or duplicate invoices. This is a growing focus for European tax administrations.
7. Improved cash flow: Faster approval workflows and fewer errors mean invoices are paid sooner. Again, this is particularly valuable in markets with long payment terms and high working‑capital needs.

How Tenthpin crafted a strategic guideline for e-invoicing in Life Sciences

Let’s make one thing clear: our focus is on providing strategic guidelines for those wanting to implement the process into their existing infrastructure. And we have proof of providing the right strategic guidance for a major European pharmaceutical company.

What were the client’s objectives?

The major European pharmaceutical company wanted to elevate their e-invoicing processes via one central e-invoicing solution/partner that could help them navigate the complex and ever-changing European landscape.

To support this journey, a comprehensive e-invoicing strategy and blueprint document had to be created. This would be followed by an RFP process to select a global tool/partner that could scale and support potentially all of the client’s locations where regulatory and compliance reporting is required.

A key to this project was to build a clear understanding of the pharmaceutical company’s processes, data structures and system dependencies in areas that would support their existing and future e-invoicing and reporting requirements.

Why did they choose Tenthpin?

One of the main reasons that we were best placed to provide the strategy for e-invoicing was due to our key focus: Life Sciences. Our team knows this industry inside out. All the regulations. The big names. The challenges, the solutions. Life Sciences is our bread and butter. 

We have consultants who have worked on several Life Sciences e-invoicing projects successfully, utilizing our tried and tested approach with accelerators to create strategic guidelines. 

More than that, we knew the major European pharmaceutical company too. Having collaborated on their S/4 OneERP  program planning, we had a full grasp of their challenges and the right solution that would fit seamlessly with their processes.

Conclusion: Now is the time to act

For Life Sciences companies, e-invoicing is no longer a distant regulatory horizon. It is an immediate operational priority. With EU-wide reforms accelerating and key markets introducing mandatory requirements well before 2030, the question is no longer if you need to modernize, but how quickly you can build the foundations to comply and compete.

The shift to real-time, digital invoicing will challenge traditional processes, expose data and system gaps, and require close alignment across finance, IT, supply chain, tax, and external partners. But with these challenges comes a strategic opening: e-invoicing can simplify complex supply chains, strengthen compliance, improve cash flow, enhance ESG reporting, and create a scalable backbone for future automation.

At Tenthpin, we’ve already helped Life Sciences organizations take a step back and focus on a strategic approach first. With deep industry expertise, proven accelerators, and a clear understanding of regulatory and ERP dependencies, we help companies define the vision, blueprint the journey, and prepare for a compliant, future-proof e-invoicing landscape.

The clock is ticking. Now is the right moment for Life Sciences companies to transform e-invoicing from a looming obligation into a long-term advantage.