Electronic data interchange for small and medium businesses
EDI has been around for 50 years, but mainly for big businesses. However, the convenience and benefits of EDI are becoming available to smaller businesses, with products such as Smeedi (Small and medium enterprise electronic data interchange).
Smeedi allows SmartTrade users to send invoices to customers and to receive many supplier invoices, via the internet, streamlining paperwork for both you and your customers.
You can set any client in SmartTrade to receive your invoices via Smeedi. If your client is also a Smeedi user and has an accounting package that connects to Smeedi, they can download the invoices direct into their accounting package. If not a Smeedi user, they receive the invoice as a PDF email attachment, together with a link that allows them to view on-line the last 50 invoices sent by you.
Suppliers can be connected to Smeedi, and upload invoices, allowing you to download them seamlessly into SmartTrade.
Alternatively, the supplier can email invoices as PDFs. Smeedi templates the supplier’s invoice (a one-off task), the supplier sends the invoices to a designated inbox, and the Smeedi PDF reader extracts the invoice data so you can download it into SmartTrade.
SmartTrade users need to register with Smeedi, download an app, and then run a wizard to connect Smeedi and SmartTrade. These simple steps should only take a few minutes.
Smeedi currently handles invoices but will be extended to other documents such as orders.