From Jan­u­ary 1^st 2025, com­pa­nies in the B2B sec­tor will have to imple­ment new require­ments for their invoic­es. We have sum­ma­rized for you what the e‑invoicing oblig­a­tion means in con­crete terms. Right up front: with Insid­ers and our stan­dard­ized solu­tions for mod­ern invoice exchange and high­ly effi­cient, intel­li­gent invoice pro­cess­ing, you are already well pre­pared for all com­ing changes.

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The e‑invoicing obligation summarized for you.

 

• Oblig­a­tion for receiv­ing invoic­es start­ing 2025
• Tran­si­tion­al peri­ods until 2028
• E‑invoices must com­ply with EN 16931
• PDFs & emails are not elec­tron­ic invoic­es

Legal requirements and definition of an electronic invoice

What is an e‑invoice?

Accord­ing to the cur­rent e‑invoice reg­u­la­tion (August 2024), an elec­tron­ic invoice is an invoice that is issued, trans­mit­ted and received in a struc­tured elec­tron­ic for­mat. This enables auto­mat­ic and elec­tron­ic doc­u­ment pro­cess­ing with­out any prob­lems. E‑invoices are there­fore always pri­mar­i­ly machine-read­able. How­ev­er, Insid­ers offers you the con­ve­nient option of cre­at­ing a human-read­able visu­al doc­u­ment.

The struc­tured elec­tron­ic for­mat of the e‑invoice must com­ply with the Euro­pean stan­dard for elec­tron­ic invoic­ing (EN 16931) and the syn­tax­es per­mit­ted in the EU direc­tive. These are UBL and UN/CEFACT CII.

How­ev­er, the leg­is­la­tor also allows invoice issuers and invoice recip­i­ents to agree indi­vid­u­al­ly on the for­mat in which invoic­es are exchanged between them. The pre­req­ui­site for this method is that the for­mat used also enables the cor­rect and com­plete extrac­tion of all infor­ma­tion required by the VAT Act from the e‑invoice into a for­mat that com­plies with the EN 16931 stan­dard or is inter­op­er­a­ble with it.

 

What is not an e‑invoice?

Just because you already receive an invoice elec­tron­i­cal­ly or send it elec­tron­i­cal­ly does not mean that it will be an offi­cial “electronic invoice” from 01.01.2025. Start­ing Jan­u­ary 1^st 2025, all invoic­es in paper form or in elec­tron­ic for­mats that do not meet the legal require­ments will be con­sid­ered “other invoic­es”. This also includes, for exam­ple, PDF invoic­es or emails with manda­to­ry invoice details.

It is there­fore impor­tant to use an effi­cient and flex­i­ble solu­tion that process­es both elec­tron­ic invoic­es in accor­dance with the strict legal require­ments and “other invoic­es” ful­ly auto­mat­i­cal­ly for you. Avoid resource-inten­sive hybrid routes and rely on the Insid­ers solu­tion, which com­bines both routes in a sin­gle sys­tem: effi­cient, intel­li­gent and resource-sav­ing.

 

Who is subject to the e‑invoicing obligation?

The e‑invoicing oblig­a­tion in Ger­many cur­rent­ly (August 2024) only applies to trans­ac­tions between com­pa­nies (B2B), where­by both the com­pa­ny pro­vid­ing the ser­vice and the recip­i­ent of the ser­vice must be based in Ger­many. Sum­ma­ry invoic­es are also sub­ject to the e‑invoice oblig­a­tion.

 

Deadlines and transition periods for the e‑invoicing obligation

The intro­duc­tion of e‑invoicing in the B2B sec­tor will be manda­to­ry from 01.01.2025. How­ev­er, there are tran­si­tion­al peri­ods (see the Ger­man VAT leg­is­la­tion) that will make it eas­i­er for you to adapt to the new require­ments.

 

Until Decem­ber 31 2026, you may con­tin­ue to send and receive paper invoic­es for B2B sales from 2025 and 2026. PDFs, email invoic­es or elec­tron­ic invoic­es that do not com­ply with the new require­ments are still per­mit­ted as before, pro­vid­ed the recip­i­ent agrees.

Until 31. Decem­ber 2027, only those invoice issuers who have a pre­vi­ous year’s turnover (total turnover of max. 800,000 EUR accord­ing to the Ger­man VAT leg­is­la­tion may send paper invoic­es and oth­er non-EN 16931-com­pli­ant invoic­es.

With the start of 2028 the new require­ments for e‑invoices and their trans­mis­sion chan­nels will final­ly be manda­to­ry for every­one.

So don’t wait until the last minute to switch to EU-com­pli­ant e‑invoicing and take advan­tage of the numer­ous ben­e­fits of e‑invoicing for you and your com­pa­ny now with Insid­ers.

How Insiders Technologies can help you

Insid­ers Tech­nolo­gies sup­ports all com­mon e‑invoice for­mats such as XRech­nung, ZUGFeRD, Fac­turX, FA(2), Fat­tura PA and more, and offers you a flex­i­ble port­fo­lio for your mod­ern invoice pro­cess­ing includ­ing invoice send­ing and receiv­ing as well as an easy con­nec­tion the most impor­tant invoice por­tals and net­works such as Pep­pol. Our solu­tions can be seam­less­ly inte­grat­ed into your exist­ing sys­tems and ensure a smooth tran­si­tion to e‑invoicing.

We keep an eye on legal devel­op­ments for you and always adapt our ser­vice and prod­ucts to the lat­est cir­cum­stances. This means you can use the e‑invoicing oblig­a­tion as an oppor­tu­ni­ty and look for­ward to the changes with peace of mind.

Our team is always avail­able to answer your ques­tions and help you switch to e‑invoicing.

Con­tact us for an indi­vid­ual con­sul­ta­tion and find out how we can opti­mize your invoic­ing process­es togeth­er.