Survey: Less than half of companies ready to accept e-invoices
From 2025, B2B companies must be able to receive eBills, and many will also have to send them from 2027. E-invoicing hasn't arrived everywhere yet, however.
(Image: Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock.com)
E-invoices are still far from being the standard in business transactions between companies, as a survey by the digital association Bitkom shows: According to the survey, only 45 percent of the companies surveyed consider themselves ready to accept e-invoices in the structured, machine-readable e-invoice formats. When sending invoices, 55 percent used the standard, of which 30 percent did so frequently and 25 percent in individual cases.
When receiving invoices, almost all companies use invoices sent as PDF files by email as standard (96%) and 99% use this when sending invoices. Almost as many gave their business partners the option of sending them invoices by post (93%). 59 percent also sent their invoices by post, with 13 percent still doing so frequently and 46 percent in individual cases. E-invoices are therefore on a par with letter post when it comes to invoice delivery, but much less frequently when it comes to receipt.
58% of companies stated that they had largely or completely digitized their business processes in accounting, finance and controlling. According to Bitkom, it surveyed 1,103 companies with 20 or more employees in Germany.
The e-invoicing obligation is coming
The e-invoicing obligation will be introduced in stages for domestic German business transactions. From January 1, 2025, every company must be able to receive e-invoices. In principle, an email inbox will suffice to meet the obligation to receive invoices, as the German government made clear in September. Ultimately, however, this is only the minimum requirement – of course you also need software that can handle the structured XML. Audit-proof archiving in accordance with legal requirements (GoBD) is also mandatory for e-invoice recipients.
From 2027, it will be mandatory that only e-invoices are sent between larger companies in the business-to-business sector. Smaller companies with a turnover of less than 800,000 euros will receive a one-year extension, but will then only be allowed to send electronic invoices to their business partners from 2028. Micro-entrepreneurs are an exception; a corresponding regulation recently passed the Bundesrat. For them, there will be no e-invoicing obligation if they remain within certain turnover limits. The tax-relevant data contained in invoices should then be transmitted to the tax authorities in real time by 2030; the EU Council agreed on a corresponding legislative package at the beginning of November.
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According to the specifications, an e-invoice must be an XML file in a structured format that can be processed automatically by a machine. Pure image files such as TIFF, PNG and PDF, Word documents, scanned paper invoices and similar do not meet these legal requirements. According to the Bitkom survey, 71% of companies that already use e-invoices use EDI formats. 27 percent used hybrid invoices with ZUGFeRD or Factur-X, which combine a human-readable viewable PDF with XML data. Only five percent used the pure XML format XRechnung.
(axk)
