Reverse-invoicing for software companies

TL;DR

I keep seeing people being literally hunted down by HR and payroll to issue their invoices so the company can close the payroll cycle. With a co-founder we want to build a reverse-invoicing service that would issue invoices on behalf of the company's "contractors", on a schedule, and would only require validation of the data on the invoice — amount payable, hours worked (or any other quantitative measure), deliverables and mentions.

Happy case would be: Invoice is issued on schedule, the freelancer gets an email with a link, they click on it, verify the amount, hours worked, put in some mentions and then confirm everything.

HR sees that the invoice has been confirmed, sees the edits, confirms on their end and that's it. No more hunting for people, no more "kind reminders" 😅

The problem

The big shift in work introduced by the pandemic was both an eye opener for companies and a forcing function for employees.

Companies are now aware that they can hire well beyond the borders of their country, and started doing so. On the other end, many people shifted towards freelancing so they could take advantage of this surge in remote jobs. People with no interest or prior experience in owning and managing a business, ended up having to "become a business".

But this comes with its own set of challenges. Since those people are still in an employee mindset, and the companies hiring them are treating them as fulltime employees, closing payroll becomes an issues.

People have to be tracked down to issue their invoices so the company can make payouts to everyone and "wrap the month".

I keep seeing this in the companies I work with who have grown their remote workforce with people from different countries and even different continents. Towards the end of the month, in the last 3-5 days before the month closed, HR people would have to run around and ping people via email, slack and any other means possible, to get them to issue the invoices for their work.

The (proposed) solution

A system that automates the issuing of invoices by reversing the process. Such a concept already exists, and it is broadly defined as reverse-billing or reverse-invoicing.

A company would sign up and add all the employees they work with through some sort of B2B contract, along with their business details and financial details — how much do they pay, how often and on what basis (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly)

When payroll starts, the system starts sending emails to the contractors, containing a link to their current invoice, pre-filled with data. If everything is sound, the contractor can confirm the invoice and that automatically marks it as payable within the system. Job done.
On the other hand, the contractor can also make edits to the invoice such as hours worked, deliverables shipped or any other mentions. In this case the invoice goes into this edit / confirmation flow. The company is notified that the invoice requires action before being approved. Once the company approves the edits, the invoice automatically becomes payable.

The question(s)

Have you been in a similar situation both as a contractor or as someone who works with contractors?
How bad was it for you and how did you end up solving it?

Thanks a lot!