The price is not on the price tag
Every solution route has a visible and an invisible price. The visible one is the licence. The invisible one is introduction, training, maintenance — and the time during which the obligation is not yet met.
Whoever looks only at the licence compares apples with half the fruit basket.
Free viewer: cheap until it isn't enough
A free viewer costs nothing and can do nothing but display. No validation, no archiving, no export. Okay for very few invoices.
The hidden price: manual work per invoice and an archive problem that gets expensive at some point. “Free” here is a loan, not a gift.
DMS and ERP: powerful but heavy
A document management system can do archiving but rarely real e-invoice validation out of the box. An ERP can do almost everything — at the price of introduction, complexity and months of project time.
Both are not bad tools. They are just often the most expensive and slowest answer to a narrowly delimited task like invoice intake.
Specialized inbox: tailored to the task
A focused inbox solution covers exactly the chain — intake, validation, approval, original archive, export — and is productive in days. The visible price is manageable, the invisible one small because little introduction is needed.
That is not a “cheap” but a tailored route: no feature overhang nobody needs, no project that eats quarters.
How to compare honestly
Do not count only the licence:
- Introduction time until actual compliance.
- Internal training and maintenance effort.
- Manual work per invoice in continuous operation.
- Risk with archive and tax audit.
- Feature overhang you pay for but do not use.