Time erodes your transaction evidence —
how can e-signatures and time-stamps prevent this?

Businesses are often faced with regulatory authorities, law enforcement (such as tax authorities) or other external auditors seeking to establish that a company's commercial transactions -sometimes from many years or even decades ago- are legitimate and properly accounted for. In addition, private disputes that end up in court or arbitration may revolve around transaction evidence. In such situations, you can sometimes provide adequate transaction evidence by pointing to multiple stored business documents (contracts, orders, delivery notes, payment information and other data) and audit trails from the historical business process. However many businesses do not maintain such records long enough or in a sufficiently coherent manner to be sure that transactions remain auditable over time.

Storing electronic documents or data does not mean you can prove this information was real in the first place. This is why many companies choose to digitally sign and time-stamp their key transaction data -in particular e-invoices- as close as possible to their source (when they are legally created) so as to enable such data to be more independently verified through technical means. Electronic signatures and time-stamps, when properly applied as part of a good transaction process, can boost your evidence to a point where your evidence position is reversed: anyone challening their authenticity or integrity must prove that your transactions are not real and unchanged.

TrustWeaver On Demand helps companies confidentily eliminate expensive and cumbersome paper-based processes by adding a robust but thin layer of bullet-proof transaction evidence on top of their e-invoicing processes. This unique process allows even the most complex and heterogeneous supply chains to retain the best available jurisdiction-specific evidence over long periods of time.

When correctly applied at, or close to the legal source of e-invoices in a good process, electronic signatures and time-stamps are very suitable as the basis of an internationally coherent business control framework.

This approach minimizes the costs associated with long,
intrusive or embarrassing tax audits because e-signatures:

1. Are legally recognized on face value as evidence of integrity and authenticity in all countries that allow e-invoicing.
2. Are available at prices representing less than 1% of the average savings achieved by going paperless.
3. Provide for the highest possible degree of legal certainty and cross-border acceptance.
4. Allow for invoice integrity and authenticity controls to have a minimum footprint on a company's applications and processes.
5. Allow a single, easily maintainable compliance strategy to be rolled out across an extended enterprise including diverse trading partners, B2B processes and product/service lines.
6. Enable evidence management to be independent of networks and archive solutions, which makes businesses less dependent on specific technology solutions or vendors.
7. Are highly standardized and supported by all major business software.