Name: International eBilling Compliance with Mitratech TeamConnect
Uploaded: 2026-09-01T19:15:57.912Z
Duration: 33 min 16 s
Description: International eBilling Compliance with Mitratech TeamConnect

Transcript for "International eBilling Compliance with Mitratech TeamConnect": Appreciate everyone joining. We're gonna start talking about our international e billing compliance, with government tax authority regulations. So the kind of the agenda for today, we have a lot of, clients that, are in early stages with one country or mature in some others, as well as some that are looking to expand, and some that are in countries that are just now rolling out new requirements or upcoming requirements. So we're going to start talking through kind of the main areas of, this particular discussion point on these government portals. So we'll look through, the workflows, the actual, take time to look at the actions, what Mitratech approaching, with this, and, we'll start with, what's changing and why. So internationally, billing is that complexities for a while. But, what we're seeing is that, countries are introducing a required step by the government to actually basically collect taxes upfront so they're not chasing them down on the back end. So what's happening is that an e invoicing portal by, the country or the government tax authority, you're required to submit an invoice to them first to get that approved and cleared before it can get paid. This is obviously interruptive into the ongoing established e billing workflows, especially for legal e billing because this does apply to everything, all billing in that country. So from retail sales to whatever else, b two b business, and not everyone has the same complexities that legal e billing has. It's not linear, and, unfortunately, it's not universal or standardized just yet. A lot of these regulations are country specific. Even the EU, which is trying to push forward some standardization, is still evolving and not there quite yet. Payment delays are exhausted even further, during these processes, especially if the government's approved something and then, the legal team kicks it back. Well, now you gotta go back to the government, and there are some policies and processes that are even more painstaking than just resubmission of an invoice from Collaborati. It's not really a billing issue only. Compliance and operational challenge that affects us, which is kind of that low quote at the bottom there, and how our differently different teams operate. So, we're really gonna you know, collaboration is key in this process, especially some of the friction points internally with your teams. How is VTech approaching this? So, some of the ways that we're looking at is, you know, building the product to adapt as regulations change. We're providing the flexibility. We're providing, ways to support compliance across countries, not just one specific. And the main key I'd say is that we're partnering with our customers through complexity. So for the last several years, I've either been a part of or led or, involved in conversations, feedback, research on this particular topic as it's rolled out to different countries and different regions. And a lot of the, you know, pain points that TeamPilot clients, that are collaborating firms, are engaging in daily as well as the upcoming changes. One of the ways that we looked at addressing this was on our recent release, team connect the CSM eight, with collaborating updates. We provided some key features. So those key features include things like, the tax authority invoice, just flagging it. We might need different workflows. So invoices that are coming in through France now maybe need to have different workflows. We need to be able to track those, search for them, make sure that those go through quicker if there's, you know, waiting on our approvals, report on, specific tax authority type invoices. You can compare to other invoices from other countries that don't have that requirement. There obviously might have, variations in the way that they, you know, have different jurisdictions. So there's fields that capture the jurisdiction. There are key fields like the reference ID as many governments provide, like, a clearance ID or a unique identifier once the invoice was approved by the government. This can be populated. Sometimes there are alternate invoice numbers or even invoice dates used. A lot of these key fields were done by some of our clients previously as workarounds. If they didn't have, you know, in the product yet. Some countries like Italy have been up and running for, several years now, with this requirement for the government to approve the invoice first. And then one of the other pieces of the, functionality that's key here is the additional sync from Collaborati. So a submitted invoice from with CSMA can now be updated, but with tax fields specifically, after it's been submitted. So there are key, aspects like you also can do attachments after it's been submitted too. So once you submit that invoice, you can actually review the data, make sure it's correct, and then they can update it with the tax information once they get that model clearance or approved with, another attachment on it. So that's kind of the key functionality that helps us try to streamline, this difficult interruption because it is. It's a it definitely interrupts our our e billing workflows. And one of the other key pieces that, is very common in the world of government tax authority clearance models, where they require that approval first is the concept of a pro form a invoice. So for those that might not be familiar, pro form a basically is another term for, like, a practice invoice, and it's, more than that. It's, a concept that others are doing, and are used to at a high level. It's trying to get alignment between the legal team and the firm, the lead ops team, the in house counsel before we go to the government. The key thing is that we don't want the firm going straight to the government portal, sitting in the invoice, and then it comes back to us. And as the legal team, we review it, and we say, woah. We don't pay for out of town expenses, or that's against our billing guidelines. This is paralegal work, and you're billing at a senior, you know, partner rate. We have to negotiate those things in the alignment beforehand, which is what the pro form a invoice concept really is. It's not a different invoice type necessarily. You think of it more like a phase. So the step one, Cal, the law firm's gonna submit this pro form a invoice. We flag it. It comes into Team Connect. You review it, make sure everything's right. If it's wrong, you reject it. Nope. This is wrong. Fix these things. They submit the pro form a invoice again. Yes. This is correct. We're good. You got alignment. The client that you you've reviewed it. You do not wanna send it to the AP yet. So you'll hold it for AP or you can hold it in your approval process because you still need the government piece to be cleared and approved. So then it's step three here. After getting alignment on that pro form a invoice, the firm will then go to the government portal and submit the invoice to the government. Now the government doesn't care about the invoice line item details, like, the same way. So a lot of the invoices these countries use might be simplified or the, required information is not the same required information that you would, send through Collaborati for normal team connect legal invoicing. But they will submit that to the government portal. That is the firm's ownership. Once they get that appear clearance, once they get that approval, sometimes it comes in an attachment. Sometimes it comes in that unique ID. Different countries have a different name for it. But we can update the reference ID, that unique number now as the firm. When I go back to Collaborati, I can upload either the the file that the government gave me for approval, or if it's a country that provides a unique identifier, unique ID for that approval. And, again, it matches our pro form a invoice. Once it's got that information updated, we release the hold in Team Connect. Our rules can be configured to do that, and and then we can send it on to AP in our next batch or, scheduled action. So, the, you know, idea behind some of this, you know, concept of of pro form a is that trying to get alignment beforehand. There are reconciliation processes because if you have alignment but then something's incorrect, what if, you know, the pro form a invoices for this amount, but it goes to government and it's approved at a higher or lower amount? At those points, there are reconciliation processes to to think through and define. They can, you know, be as much as we'll reject the old pro form a, resubmit the actual invoice because, again, we held it. We haven't sent it to AP for payment. There are some reconciliation processes with credit or additional invoice, options to make up that delta of the difference. But the idea behind this is to have those as the edge cases. So we're not pushing them all the way through, but this is a way to try to get alignment initially and simplify this, in our happy path, if you will. But then there are edge cases where we do have to reconcile that there is a difference, in those use cases. So the high level, you'll see, kind of just a a a general workflow. Depending on the, country, again, these are are country specific, depends on how they the workflows happen. The firms are checking with you. The firms are sending to the government portal, and those are government portal sitting back to them, the AP system, or Mitratech. So this is just kind of a visual that, you know, could talk through. It's a general one, but if you go to, like, a specific country, they'll be more well defined, depending on the the different, model that country uses for, its e billing workflows. Alright. So now I think we want to take a look at just what actually is in the product here. So let me share my screen. That'll be we'll stop sharing. I will grab it. Thank you. Right. So this is, an example here of I'm in a Team Connect environment. I have an invoice record. So you have your normal invoice tabs here. Well, we've added that Team Connect CSMA is an additional, section for tax authority information. So in this invoice, you can identify if it's in the pro form a stage, if it's a tax authority invoice, and if it's hold for approval, hold for AP approval, anything like that. The jurisdiction, locality if needed. Not all these fields might be used depending on, again, the countries you're you're e billing in. But, the reference ID is typically that unique identifier. So I might have this held the tax authority approval process until I get that reference ID. And we can have rules that automatically say if this is populated, release the hold, or it no longer is that pro form a concept. If there is reconciliation to be done, I do have the ability to reject, or resubmit or, again, catch that delta. This is what will come in on the Team Connect side. And this is a block you could add to whatever, object view you might have. This will be added to, your invoice. I put it on a separate tab just for this demo. On the Claverati side, they have the ability to, obviously, create invoices via these upload, PDF upload, or even the, manual creation. And if you notice, this is pending client approval. This is that new functionality I mentioned. They can't change all the actual fields, but they can update, the data, for the tax authority fields. So I can add here if I got that approval from the government. I can add my reference ID here, and then push that over. So you'll get notified. There's a rule automatically that emails, Team Connect admins in the in that group. You can define that group, of course. The jurisdiction locality and the reference ID are all fields in the leads files if they use XML two one, these are there. They can update them, via the leads upload. They also can populate them, of course, if they don't have the information initially. So if they sent that over to get alignment first, they then come back here and update it. Furthermore, as I mentioned too, this again has already been submitted to Team Connect, pending client approval. I now can choose a file and upload, you know, the government approval invoice or whatever that might be. When it's uploaded, again, you'll get an email, and it will, go to Team Connect in that group to be notified that, you know, an attachment has been added to this particular invoice. Oh, and I already I I used this one earlier, so that's why it tells me it already exists. The team connect side, again, you get notified. You go into the, you know, invoice record itself if you didn't see the data. So I have some other ones I can look at here. If I see that data being updated, I can then release the hold, or you can have rules that automatically do it. So, again, when you have that key information that comes over and it syncs, you know, it's no longer on the hold, it's no longer a pro form a invoice, you can write be ready to send it to AP. If it's an attachment of, again, an approver in the approval process can be reviewing this. And if it is correct, then they can, of course, just release the hold if they have access to this, and they uncheck the boxes, as I mentioned. So there again, the flexibility through the system for different compliance challenges, it's built on purpose that way, as sort of a a building blocks that you can leverage. It will be something that you wanna think through as far as you rolling out to different countries. But we obviously have the ability to know who's sending us the invoice. So if it comes from London, it goes to this workflow. If it comes from a firm or vendor in France, we can identify it. It goes to this workflow. Sometimes if it goes to a certain cost center, it might be, a trigger to go to a different workflow. All those are key points of, information and data that we can use. And I'll go ahead and stop sharing here and go back to the deck. Alright. So these are yeah. Go some screenshots, I think, in the deck, Adam's Screenshare to show the different fields that we just walked through. Yeah. And then you can keep going. So that's kind of what I just demoed, and then here's a list of all, you know, information that's kinda like the release notes you just made in in, in in the, system itself. So one thing I'll I'll mention, what we're hearing again from our our clients in the market, what things are, you know, happening is that, you know, a lot of times we wanna roll out our e billing process, internationally in phases, which is, accurate, but, we might not be able to do that. Sometimes our hands are being forced because of a new, country's, you know, regulations being, implemented on, you know, July 1 or February 1 or whatever it is of an upcoming, time that we need to make sure we're in compliance by that time. Still, I think is is a process that you can think through as as these countries are, updating their requirements and rolling out these phases. But that's definitely, you know, sometimes the challenge when you wanna go at our own pace, and it is forcing us as well to think through this and and collaborate with, our clients to understand, you know, where those friction points are. You know, some countries are more difficult than others. So, this isn't a one, you know, solution solves everything problem. This isn't, you know, just because it's working for several countries doesn't mean another country doesn't come out with regulations that's outside of this. The countries that we're currently billing in, they could obviously roll out a phase two, phase three, or update it to make it more challenges. Obviously, not necessarily ideal, but that is the reality. And one thing we're trying to be as prepared as possible, but those do, obviously cause interruptions. And then, like, I kinda mentioned too, the reconciliation is, you know, is a friction point, and it usually is, in the billing world. But with the government portals, you know, even if you try to get alignment on pro form a invoice, you know, there could be changes. It could be differences. What if there's tax issues that come downstream we have to reject? There's times that the AP team needs to be reconciled with what we have in team connect. Those are friction points. There are some ways that we can try to make that easier to match and identify it with those unique identifiers that reference ID and things like that. But those are definitely areas that, are still friction points. Again, if you attach an invoice from the government, how do we make sure it's the correct amount, for the invoice amount that they attach it to in Team Connect? It's manual process if you don't have a rule in place that, you know, could try to to look at both, but there's, you know, another area of reconciliation that, is a challenge. And then, yeah, if you go just hold on. The last point of theirs is, you know, again, asking who questions you, which regions are you operating in. I think we'll send a a quick survey after this too to kinda get some more feedback. Ways that you're handling compliance today, where your friction points so, obviously, these are some of the things we're obviously hearing, but we're trying to make sure we're continuing to be in contact with, our partners, our tax teams, other experts out there because, again, Mitratech, we're not tax experts. We're really focused on, you know, our e billing workflow processes is, you know, really where, our expertise sort of lies versus the tax piece of this. But as we're talking to our clients and collaborating with us, that's really where it's helping us build better value, and and build upon what we have already as well as find processes and ways that our services support team can help, and continue to help going forward. The next, slide, I think, is showing some data, which is kind of fun to take a look at. Wait for that slide change. Oops. I think it's one too many there. Oh, can we go back to the slide on the market and the data? There we go. Right here. Yep. Yeah. So kind of at a glance, high level 2024 to 2025, we saw a pretty big increase, in non US invoices that were approved. So quite a few, quite a big jump for, again, international invoicing. We have some callouts here, like countries that are seeing a plus 200% increase just in invoice volume and the net invoice total. So the amount of invoice that are coming through and the amounts on the invoices that are coming through. And then we kinda just threw out a high level, look at some top 10 countries by net invoice totals, for the past eighteen months. And one of the things I I'd call out here is there are a lot of invoices in these countries already being submitted. And then the other thing I'd call out too is that you see that it's not just one or two clients in some of these countries. There's quite a few. And there's obviously the, associated firms, in these countries that are dealing with the billing as well. So if you're rolling out to these or you're working in these, you know, opening those conversations with your firms, talking to them about their processes. Obviously, if the country just rolled it out, a lot of us will be new at the same time. But if you're rolling this out to some firms that have been billing in that country for a while, talking to them because, obviously, they're gonna have their processes in place too and trying to make sure we're working with them as best we can because, you know, they're the owners of of getting that information to the government, getting that approved, and then also making sure that they follow your e billing guidelines. And sometimes matching those two can be difficult if we're not on the same page or understanding, as well as you coming to them with their e billing guidelines or requirements, helping them understand, hey. This is how we'd like to approach this process, and and follow it this way. And let's talk about the edge cases, the reconciliation points that may happen too and and how we're going to address those. We are seeing, you know, overall increase. I think this is trend is gonna continue, as we see more and more internationally billing happen, as we see our team connect clients roll out to their legal teams across other countries, as we start to see some more standardization. So, again, the EU is trying to put through some standardization. They've got some programs and and futures, VIDA, VITA, and the digital age, efforts. But, you know, this is not a problem that's going anywhere anytime soon. So it's something that we're continuing to, of course, look at and will be part of this international billing process for a while as we have lots of countries that are in small earlier phases, and those that have not rolled out some of these requirements yet most likely will. Okay. I think we go to the next slide. Yeah. So where are we going? I know that was quite a bit of information, and it does not touch all the different pieces of the puzzle. But I think for a lot of us on this call is trying to get a level set of what's happening, where these challenges are coming from, how the product itself has options to deal and provide solutions to keep value, how we're gonna work with firms, change management, how we understand things going forward. This is an area of continued investment. So even the the recent release, there's other things that we're looking into. Is it, you know, ways that we can improve communications as a way they improve training, provide those opportunities with our collaborative support team, ability to, work with, you know, services team for, you know, the release and the flexibility, the power of Team Connect to allow you to have your specific country workflows. If you're not billing in those 10 countries, you're just concerned about Mexico or just concerned about Canada or just gonna you know, France. Because, again, not everyone has a high, percentage or invoices going through each of the countries even if they are you billing in, you know, France. It might be a very low percentage. So, sometimes the focus is where, the the bigger friction points are and where the most of the, e billing occurrences are happening. So higher volumes, higher net totals. And then, of course, continue to add things to the product that make this, process, easier. There's no ways, you know, to get around it is interrupted interruption. You know, there are challenges, the some countries have that others don't, and we're trying to, you you know, work through those as well and be more proactive instead of reactive as these are continuing to be released throughout the next several years. And I think the key in the middle there is the ongoing engagement part. So we continue on to have engagement. This is an example of webinar we're doing. We'll continue to have things like this. And I want to call out at our client, you know, Interact, conference. We will be having a session where you'll have don't have to worry about me talking as much. You'll hear from actual TeamKinect customers as they talk through some of the aspects of this problem and, their point of view and their experiences as rolling out and the challenges, successes maybe they might have had, but that's one of the sessions we'll have at Interact. I'm sure, we'll continue to have conversations about that there as well. You can always hit, of course, get on calls with our product team and willing to to talk through some of the more specific questions you might have too, and hear that feedback. So, you know, we've got some great feedback from other customers, helped us realize that, oh, we need to be more, communicative on this because, there's a lot to be, you know, discussed. There's a lot of ways we can provide some, you know, information that helps firms, that will help our support team, that, gets alignment with the cost of our customers that are going through the same thing instead of having siloed conversations. So I wanted to call that out as a commitment to, you know, going forward is not only to this research from product perspective, but also from our client engagement perspective. This is a topic that we know isn't going anywhere, and we wanna continue to hear from you on that particular, piece. And then a high level too was we kinda mentioned is just that, you know, providing a flexible platform approach. We're looking into different options, but we wanna make sure that, you know, we, design things that can be leveraged, that can, you know, adapt to changes because even if it's requirement today, doesn't mean necessarily it's a requirement in the future. So we wanna make sure that we're we're thinking through some of the more long term, as well as addressing what the immediate needs are in ways that, you know, we can do through our power of Team Connect and e billing. Because you don't wanna lose that. You don't want, you know, firms having to go outside the system or having some one off for this country. Obviously, it might happen, but that's the, you know, worst case scenarios that we wanna try to address because you have your system that you've built that has a lot of value in it when these invoices come through there, especially, you know, again, countries the past might have done it through email. There's security risk there. There's lack of information. There's time that your attorneys have to spend reviewing something on an email versus going through the system with the automation of the rules and validations you already have in place. So try to keep that value then leverage that while also making sure we comply with these different country regulations. Alright. I will pause there. I know we're about ten or fifteen minutes, I think, to to have some q and a here, Adam Aspelin. Let's see. Yeah. Cal Yelderman, it's obviously, like, a super impactful and really a hot topic right now. I wanna go through some questions now with you. We've got a lot of people chiming in. But first, Jane says it's the best thought out solution that she's seen so far for global CTX tax systems. So that's super super good to hear, and I I'm glad that we have you here because you're an expert. And I'm just gonna got a couple questions I think will clarify for people really quick, and I'll just go ahead with the first one. Does does the firm send two different invoices? Does does one go to Team Connect? Does one go to the government portal? What what is going on? Can you make it simple. for us? Yeah. And that's a great question. Yeah. Unfortunately, where we are today is that, the legal invoice comes to Team Connect for your review. Okay. That is invoiced then for the firm. It's gonna be submitted to the government portal as well. It's a separate invoice. There are ways that they can obviously not have to recreate the wheel, per se, but they are submitting, that invoice first to you and Team Connect in this pro form a concept. Otherwise, though, the the government will not send it to team connect. So it's a great example of these government portals, don't give you the ability to say, like, hey. If it's this, number or if it's this cost center, whatever, send it to our legal system. And if it's this, everything goes to the finance system. The AP system, is the one stop shop that the the kind of the owner of this process to make sure they could pay these invoices. So these government portals, if they do have a connection back to your your payment, team, is going to that finance system. They do kick them back to the firms as well, and the firms can make those updates. But it is two separate sort of submission processes. I knew you would know the answer for sure. A couple more. So will Team Connect is it automatically gonna compare the attached government file against the invoice record? Can you talk a little bit about that for us? It's a great question. I think I tried to allude to that. One of the friction points is that reconciliation. Well, there there's different parts of this process where you wanna reconcile. In this case, the question is about reconciling that's on the file to what's actually in the Team Connect record. So, you know, basically, did they attach the right record? Is it the correct amount? There's not something out of the box that, I mean that, in the product, updates we made, the features, the functionality, does not include a rule that compares an attachment to the actual amounts on the invoice. That's something, though, our, professional services team has worked with some clients on to actually try to automate that because it is another area of manual process review. And then also somewhere, we have an NBR team and legal review team that also does some of that as well, because, yeah, that's an area of friction because of the resource power it takes to compare an attachment to, the actual numbers on the invoice record. But it's not something that's, that's there today. It is something that you could look into billing on or utilizing another service for. Wonderful. So we've been in the weeds a little bit, but I wanna back up just a bit to two product related questions for you. Great. Do people need to be on Team Connect version eight to get this new e billing, and how how easy is it to turn this on and off? Yes. That's a key call out. So this these fields and functionality are, you need to be on team connect eight, version. eight to get these. If you're not on that version and these these requirements come out, again, reach out to your, account manager. Our services team has addressed some of this on older versions. Some of our clients that had to, you know, implement some of these things a few years back before maybe visit the product, look to do some of the same things, maybe had added a few fields like this to work with our AP team. But you need to be on Team Connect eight to get this. Okay. It's very simple to add the, functionality. So in Collaborati, it exists. And once that client once you, the team, that client is on eight, it automatically starts showing up for them. So it's gonna be just change management for your firms, letting them know the billing guideline updates, so how you're gonna handle that with these fields available now with the ability to attach or update these fields. On the Team Connect side, the rules are already there. You just make sure that that group of people receiving the emails are correct, and you need to just add the block to an invoice view that you have for for whatever, the way that your attorneys and everyone else have looked at invoices. It's just adding that to what's called the object view. So a little bit of the weeds there. Now I'll say that's easy to turn that on and it need to be on this version. What I'll also comment is that the the flexibility of platform is designed on purpose. So if you want to think about your workflows, if you need to alter your rules that you already have, if you wanna think about validations or holding for AP, all that stuff, they aren't overly complicated, but they are rules that you'll need to configure or add. Wow. I'm so glad that we have a subject matter expert here today. You you've been super enlightening about how this just this whole this whole situation that everybody's in right now, Cal Yelderman. So, Jane asked another really great question here, and I I'm gonna kinda call it out and see if we can get some input here. So pro form a invoices, they're they're the draft invoices, Yeah. right, in a law firm system, and they must be put to the final months, before the final month's end or the info they contain might be released into an unbilled population. How does the workflow align with firm's requirements to finalize things by certain dates? Can you speak to that? I'll try to and I love first of all, Jane is an expert herself. And I actually had a conversation with her on on these topics, in the past a few different times. But, Cool. part of part of the design here was to put that flexibility in there to try to get that alignment. But I think where the callouts here is how do you work with the firm? And that is a key concept to talk through is when you're doing these billing guidelines, sometimes you get so far into your project. You haven't talked to maybe, you know, it it have to be all the firms, but maybe you have a firm you work with a lot or have good relationship with. Bring them into your process earlier on, getting that feedback from them because it is a a collaborative effort. This is a interruption for all of us, from the technology to the, Sure. compliance AP team and, obviously, the firms as well. So bringing them in to understand that month end. And as I mentioned, there are ways to reconcile if there's a change, between what's the pro form a and what actually needs to be paid. If there is a change, happy path is there's not, but we know that that, edge cases do arise. I I am so glad that you were able to to kind of get into the weeds a little bit with us here and enlighten everybody. You're gonna get even deeper into the weeds, I would imagine, and be taking questions live and kind of going into this at at Interact in Phoenix, which is in just month is that just a month. Is that right, Cal? Will you be chatting about this? Yeah. And I think that, you know, this is a good call out because, I will not necessarily jump into the weeds as much as, hopefully, you get to hear from, your others in the industry, others, and legal teams that are, you know, gonna talk to some topics here. And then, obviously, after this is a session, the whole week of interact, the whole time we're there, there's plenty of times I'd like to, you know, get into the weeds and discuss a little bit more about your countries as well. But for this session, I'm excited to hear from actual, you know, use cases and experience of our clients that have been implementing this or have faced challenges or have, you know, faced, you know, difficulties in some countries and successes in others. You can't really beat the the collaboration opportunity when peers and peers are in the room, and we've got subject matters in the room as well. Just kind of moving this whole conversation forward. Cal, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today and kind of illuminate this this subject matter. Everybody, we will send this out. We will send out the deck. You can take out your phone and scan that QR code. Get yourself a discount to, join us at, Interact in Phoenix here next month. So on behalf of everybody, Cal Yelderman, this has been the, quite a webinar, international e billing with Mitratech Team Connect. Any final words, Cal, for the group? Thanks, everyone. You know, I know we didn't get to all the questions, but thanks for joining your participation. I know that international tax compliance is not the most fun topic to talk about, but it is an important one and one that we're here to to work with you on. And so thank you so much for, your, feedback and your engagement. Thanks.