Asteria Corporation and LayerX Inc. announced that the companies have formed a business alliance built upon a collaboration between Asteria's data integration tool "ASTERIA Warp" (hereinafter "Warp") and the partner's "Bakuraku" series of corporate expense management services. As a first step, the companies will start a collaboration between the "Bakuraku electronic books preservation" service, which responds to the planned enforcement of the electronic books preservation act and an invoice system, and Warp. The alliance will first see the integration of the "Bakuraku electronic books preservation" service in the Bakuraku range of cloud storage services and Warp.

This will allow user companies to seamlessly transfer and save documented evidence that have been stored in the core system run by a company or cloud storage to the "Bakuraku electronic books preservation" service, bringing them in line with the electronic books preservation act to be enforced in January 2024. The electronic books preservation act was revised in 2022 to mandate storage of electronic transaction records in the form of electronic data. The change calls for companies to urgently digitize their accounting operations by, for instance, introducing new systems to comply with the new regulations.

However, many companies handle documents for order management (written quotations, purchase orders, delivery notes, etc.) and accounting documents (invoices, receipts, etc.) on separate systems, and the method of delivery and management of each document varies. This makes it difficult to centralize management of documents related to the electronic books preservation act. Adding to the problem is that the integration of related documents that are managed on separate systems into a single system would require a huge amount of cost due to the need to construct a new system, while the internal management of such a system would be complex.

"Bakuraku" series of corporate expense management services provided by LayerX have been adopted by over 5,000 companies. Among the products, the company launched in 2021 the "Bakuraku electronic books preservation" service, which allows for the storage of invoices, receipts, and other documents related to national tax in the form of electronic data. In addition to the electronic books preservation act, the service also responds to the 2021 revised version of the Japan Image and Information Management Association (JIIMA) certification that recognizes compliance with legal requirements for scanner storage software and another that recognizes compliance with legal requirements for electronic transaction software.

Asteria's "Warp" has led the domestic enterprise data integration software (EAI/ESB) market for the 16th consecutive year. Due mainly to its ability to connect to over 100 tools and services without writing a single line of code, the product has been introduced by more than 10,000 companies. The latest alliance comes as the companies aim to advance digitization of accounting operations in line with the revised electronic books preservation act and the invoice system to be implemented in October 2023.

The alliance enables the integration of the "Bakuraku electronic books preservation" service and "Warp", automatically collecting documents and text-based data stored in the users' existing systems via Warp and linking these data to the Bakuraku service without coding. This will let users comply with the electronic books preservation act without having to make a big change to their existing systems.