Ascertia Invoice Signing (Jan08)

www.ascertia.com © Copyright 2001-2007 Ascertia Ltd.
Adding Digital Signatures to e-Invoices
and other e-business documents and workflows
November 2007

2
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
Documents
for sending

9
(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

10
(c) Invoice Workflow Approval
Verify
Timestamp
& sign final VAT invoice
Invoice
Review
Approve
Sign internal
workflow
documents
Review/
Release
Verify
Countersign
internal
documents
Transmit
ERP
CRM
ECM

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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
rod.crook@ascertia.com
+44 1256 895416

Ascertia Invoice Signing (Jan08)

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