eInvoicing

Electronic invoicing, also known as eInvoicing, is the digital exchange of an invoice between a supplier and a buyer of a good or service. An eInvoice is an invoice issued, sent, and received in a structured way that makes it easy to process automatically and electronically.

In the EU, some businesses and all public administrations use the European standard on eInvoicing. All public administrations in the EU can receive electronic invoices for public procurement contracts, ans some EU countries have made it mandatory for suppliers to submit eInvoices for the same procedure. It is optional for your business to adopt eInvoicing as a standard with other businesses.

eInvoicing in practice

All public administrations in the EU must be able to receive eInvoices, and in most cases if you are a supplier, it is your choice to send one or not.

However, each EU country has defined their own rules on how eInvoicing works, and it could be mandatory to send eInvoices for public contracts in some countries. You can review specific rules by country in the eInvoicing factsheets.

eInvoicing and your business

eInvoicing can help your business by:

• quickly processing the information and data and feeding it directly into your business’s payment and accounting systems
• replacing the physical paper forms with an electronic form that lets you handle and archive invoices faster
• letting you save on printing, postage, and human resources.

If you want to start using eInvoicing in your business, you can use these guidelines to get started.

You can also get help from a service and solution provider, a company that provides electronic or physical tools to help your business set up an eInvoicing system, or by using the eInvoicing services package.