When businesses start looking into e-invoicing, one of the first questions they often have is surprisingly simple: which model actually applies to us?
It sounds straightforward until you start looking at how different businesses use e-invoicing. An ERP provider may want to give hundreds of customers access to e-invoicing through its own platform. An accounting software company may want e-invoicing to become part of the experience its users already have. A large enterprise, meanwhile, may simply need to connect its own financial systems and legal entities to e-invoicing networks across multiple countries.
All three businesses need e-invoicing. But they do not necessarily need the same solution.
That is why choosing the right model is an important first step. At Storecove, the main options are Integrator, Cloud Accounting, and Enterprise, and the right choice depends on how your business operates, who you provide e-invoicing for, and what you need the connection to do.
The easiest place to start is with who you are serving
Before getting into technical requirements, one question can usually point you in the right direction: Is e-invoicing for your own business, or are you providing it to your customers?
If you are an ERP, financial software, or other technology provider and you want to build e-invoicing into your product, you are looking at the Integrator model. Your customers use your platform, and you want e-invoicing to become another capability they can access through it.
That could mean an ERP provider connecting its platform to Storecove and then enabling its customers to send and receive e-invoices without having to build their That could mean an ERP provider connects its platform to Storecove and enables its customers to send and receive e-invoices without building separate e-invoicing connections. From the customer's perspective, e-invoicing becomes part of the software they already use. This differs from an enterprise simply trying to become compliant
Imagine a company operating across Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands. It might have several legal entities, several VAT registrations, and potentially multiple ERP systems. It needs to connect those systems to the relevant e-invoicing networks and make sure invoices can move correctly across each market.
That is an Enterprise use case.
The distinction can sound obvious when you put the two examples next to each other, but this is where the conversation often gets confusing, particularly when a prospect starts counting legal entities.
A Customer isn't necessarily a legal entity
One of the most important things for an Integrator to understand is that the number of customers and the number of legal entities are not the same thing.
This comes up frequently because an Integrator's customers may be large organizations with complicated structures. Take an ERP provider with 100 customers. Those customers might collectively operate several hundred legal entities across different countries. Each legal entity may have its own VAT number, invoice flows, and requirements, but that does not mean the ERP provider suddenly has several hundred customers.
For the Integrator model, we are looking at the customers using the Integrator's platform, rather than simply counting every legal entity belonging to those customers.
This distinction is especially important when discussing the commercial model. A single customer may have five, ten, or even more legal entities that need support through the platform. From an e-invoicing perspective, these entities still matter because each may need to be configured and connected individually. However, they should not automatically be treated as separate customers just because they are separate legal entities.
It is a small distinction in terminology that can make a very big difference when a business is trying to understand which model applies to it.
Where Cloud Accounting fits
The Cloud Accounting model sits in a slightly different place.
Here, the business is also providing software to customers, but the nature of that software and the customer experience is different. A cloud accounting provider already gives businesses a place to manage their financial and invoicing processes. Adding e-invoicing means bringing that capability directly into an environment customers are already using.
The goal is not to send customers somewhere else whenever they need to issue or receive a compliant electronic invoice. Instead, e-invoicing becomes part of the accounting workflow itself.
For the software provider, that means the integration needs to work naturally within the existing product. For the customer, ideally, the experience feels much simpler: they continue using their accounting platform while the underlying e-invoicing infrastructure handles the exchange and country-specific requirements.
That is why the distinction between Cloud Accounting and Integrator is not simply about company size. It is about the type of platform you operate and how e-invoicing fits into the product you provide.
Enterprise is about your own operations
Then there is Enterprise. If you are not selling software to other businesses and instead need e-invoicing for your own organization, Enterprise is generally where the conversation begins.
This could be a multinational company managing thousands of invoices across several countries, or a growing business that needs to connect its ERP to Peppol and other e-invoicing networks as mandates come into effect. The complexity here often comes from the organization's internal structure. There may be multiple legal entities, different VAT registrations, different invoice flows, and different systems involved in accounts receivable and accounts payable.
That complexity matters for the implementation, but it differs from the complexity an Integrator faces. An enterprise is managing e-invoicing for itself. An Integrator is enabling e-invoicing for the businesses that use its software.
Once you look at it that way, the distinction becomes much easier to understand.
The Number of Entities Isn't What Determines the Model
This is probably the most useful thing to keep in mind when figuring out where you fit. A business can have two legal entities and still be an Enterprise customer. Another might offer a platform used by hundreds of companies, each with multiple legal entities, and be an Integrator. So counting entities isn’t the best place to start.
Instead, look at the relationship between your business, your software and the people who will actually use the e-invoicing capability.
- If your company is building e-invoicing into a product that other businesses use, you are likely looking at Integrator or Cloud Accounting.
- If your company is using its own ERP, accounting or financial systems to manage its own invoicing, Enterprise is likely the more relevant model.
The legal entities then become part of the implementation conversation rather than the deciding factor for which commercial model you fall under.
What does this mean when you're evaluating Storecove?
Once the right model has been identified, the conversation can become much more specific.
- For an Integrator, the focus is likely to be on how Storecove's API fits into the existing product, how customers are enabled through the platform, and how the Integrator can offer e-invoicing across the markets its customers operate in.
- For a Cloud Accounting provider, the emphasis is on making e-invoicing work naturally within the accounting experience customers already rely on.
- For an Enterprise, the conversation is more likely to focus on the organization's own systems, legal entities, countries, invoice volumes, and integration requirements.
The technology underneath those conversations can overlap, but the reason for using it is different. And that is really the key to choosing the right model.
Don't start with how many legal entities you have. Start with who the e-invoicing solution is actually for.
Once that is clear, the rest of the questions become much easier to answer: how should the integration work, how many customers need to be supported, how should legal entities be configured, which markets need to be covered, and what will the onboarding process look like?
E-invoicing can become complicated quickly when businesses try to solve every requirement at once. Starting with the right model gives you a much clearer place to begin.
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