TRINIDAT-WIKI
E-bills are mandatory
Act now to meet legal deadlines.
Companies have been dreaming of the paperless office for a long time – sometimes with more, or in Germany, often with less success. Starting next year, many companies will take a step into the digital future. This is because from 2025, e-billing (electronic invoicing) will be mandatory for companies. The reason for this is the decision in favor of the so-called Growth Opportunity Act of March 2024, which makes e-billing the standard for business billing.
For companies in the B2B sector, a number of legal, technical and organizational questions regarding invoice processing will arise from 2025 onwards. In order to be prepared for the gradual introduction of e-billing, it is advisable to already be familiar with the new requirements for electronic invoicing and processing and to implement them in the company.
What is an e-bill?
What exactly is meant by an e-bill? First of all, in the future there will only be two types of bill: e-bills and other bills.
An e-bill is an electronic bill that can be digitally created, transmitted and processed. What is new and important about this is that the e-bill must be issued and digitally processed in a structured electronic data format that complies with the EN 16931 standard. This also means that scanned paper invoices or invoices in PDF format will no longer be sufficient in the future. The new regulation for e-bills is intended to replace manual invoice processing and enable the fully automated processing of invoice data. To this end, various requirements for the data formats used must be observed. For example, standardized formats such as XRechnung, which has been in use for public contracts for some time, currently meet the requirements for e-bills. The hybrid data format ZUGFerD, a mixture of PDF document and XML file, also complies with the European standard.
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E-billing requirement: Which companies should act now?
Does your accounting department already use XRechnung or the ZUGFerD data format? Then you are on the safe side. However, if you still send business invoices by email as PDFs, you should quickly modernize your invoicing processes. From 2025, all companies that bill for taxable services between companies (B2B) will be required to issue e-invoices. Incidentally, from 2028 this requirement will also apply to small businesses. Invoices to end customers (B2C) are not affected by the e-invoicing requirement.
Watch out when you receive the bill!
Even if there is a transitional period for small businesses and businesses with only end customers: All companies must be prepared to receive e-invoices! This means that even if your company only has private customers, your accounting system must be technically capable of receiving and processing e-invoices in the standardized formats mentioned.
E-bills: technical and organizational requirements
From 2025, the e-bill format must comply with the legally compliant standards for invoicing and processing. Accordingly, it is important that the accounting software used can be integrated into existing enterprise systems, such as ERP solutions. At trinidat, we have been adapting our customers’ existing software to e-billing for several months and implementing digital invoicing in accordance with legal, technical and customer-specific requirements. For example, we program new invoice modules into the ERP systems in use. This ensures that invoicing can continue seamlessly and error-free while also being adapted to the new legal requirements.
In addition to seamless integration into existing billing systems, other technical requirements are important when switching to e-billing. For example, the implementation of standardized e-billing formats should be used to strive for complete automation of billing processes.
This not only increases the efficiency of invoice processing, but also ensures that (human) errors in invoicing are minimized. Security aspects and data protection requirements should also be considered when switching to digital accounting.
As always when a new or enhanced software is rolled out in a company, the employees who will be working with the program should be brought on board as early as possible and trained in the new application. To ensure that the digital invoicing workflow runs seamlessly, it is also important to check to what extent the switch to e-billing will affect other business processes. It is therefore also important to inform business partners, customers and suppliers before the switchover and to clarify that all business partners can receive and process e-bills.
Further development of existing software
Since most companies already use accounting software, an individual further development of the existing software is often the fastest and cheapest way to e-billing. In many cases, switching to expensive standard software is not advisable. trinidat adapts your existing application, such as your ERP system, exactly to your requirements and ensures that your invoices are not only legally compliant, but can also be created, sent and processed faster and more efficiently.
The e-bill is coming. Act now!
We advise you on the seamless introduction of e-billing into your IT systems.