The e-invoicing obligation is coming!

E exchange of invoices in electronic form, the so-called ‘e-invoice’, has now been finalised in Germany, following numerous other European countries. From 1 January 2025, every company must be able to accept and process electronic invoices.

Sending your invoices in electronic form is not yet mandatory. Sending an invoice on paper or in a digital format other than ZUGFerD and XRechnung, e.g. as a PDF, will still be possible in 2025 and 2026. In 2027, this exemption will only apply to companies with a turnover of less than EUR 800,000.00 in the previous year and from 2028, sending invoices in electronic form will be mandatory for all companies. Only invoices under 250.00 euros are exempt.

FactWork can already generate the two e-invoice formats ZUGFeRD and XRechnung for dispatch in the current version as an attachment to PDFMail.

You can receive incoming invoices in two different formats:

• ZUGFeRD:
  The ZUGFeRD format is a hybrid format, as it consists of a PDF part - i.e. a document file - and embedded electronic data (XML format). The PDF part is directly readable - however, from 1 January 2025, the content of the XML data will be decisive in the event of discrepancies between the content of the document file and the content of the XML data. The PDF part can be used as normal for manual processing, but the uncertainty of a deviation from the XML data remains.
   
• XRechnung:
  An eInvoice in ‘XRechnung’ format is an XML document and cannot be read directly. The XML data must be made visible or read by a programme.

F.EE is working on two solutions for processing an e-invoice:

• Free viewer:
  We will deliver this viewer with FactWork in the next version as part of maintenance at no extra cost. The eInvoice can be stored manually as an attachment to the invoice process in FactWork, and the content of the XML data can be displayed in the viewer. The data is transferred and processed manually.
   
• Automated processing:
  We are expanding the EDIFACT module of FactWork for the automated processing of an e-invoice. To use this more convenient solution, it is necessary to licence additional modules. We will inform you about the prices of the modules when the next version is available (approx. November 2024).