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eInvoicing Documentation

EMSFEI's key deliverables


Since 2010 until 2020, the  European Multi-Stakeholder Forum on eInvoicing (EMSFEI), brought together stakeholders from national eInvoicing forums and from the user side of the market. Its objective was to help pave the way for a broad-scale adoption of eInvoicing at national and EU-level. The Forum created a unique opportunity to exchange experiences and best practice across borders. It also discussed issues of common interest and issued recommendations to the Commission.

The EMSFEI sub-groups’ addressed specific topics relevant to the eInvoicing implementation phase ahead. The sub-groups were formed for a 6-month period during which its members produced documents on specific challenges to the eInvoicing community.

On this page, you can have access to the deliverables produced under the 3rd mandate of the EMSFEI:

An essential and handy checklist for decision-makers who have responsibility for eInvoicing in all public sector organisations throughout Europe, supporting public administrations in both the transposition of the eInvoicing Directive into national law and the implementation of a European standard on eInvoicing. 

While Directive 2014/55/EU enables interoperable eInvoicing, the legislation also takes into consideration that buyers who must support specific processes or legal requirements may need to restrict the core data model or they may need to extend the core. The European standard provides for this by defining Core Invoice Usage Specification (CIUS) and Extensions. The CIUS and Extensions can however inhibit interoperability and the rationale of the Directive. The EMSFEI recommendations here are therefore extremely useful for eInvoicing stakeholders who are considering making use of a CIUS.

A growing number of Member States are introducing additional requirements for eInvoicing based on local definitions and provisions. Such requirements are usually motivated to improve tax revenue generation for government. The Commission welcomes and supports Member State governments improve revenue generation, eliminate tax fraud or under-declaration and improve audit and control procedures. However, these additional requirements are presently not at all harmonised across the EU and may unintentionally impact the ability of taxable persons and their service providers to generate, deliver and report e-invoices by electronic means. This Discussion paper outlines recommendations to both the European Commission and Member States to ensure that requirements are developed and defined in a way that does not create obstacles to the players in the Single Market.

The aim of this report is to provide a set of recommendations in the area of “transmission and interoperability” to answer the following questions: ‘How do we ensure that suppliers, especially smaller suppliers, can safely and efficiently transmit or deliver by electronic means eInvoices to their buyers or contracting entities and how do we ensure that all buyers, can safely and efficiently receive by electronic means eInvoices in a form that they are able to process? What gaps, if any, exist in technical standards or business practices to support transmission and interoperability?

The discussion paper on 'New technologies and impact on eInvoicing' points out how the use of new technologies in the area of distributed architecture (e.g. Distributed Ledger Technologies, Blockchain). The report presents new ways and solutions for companies to improve their processes and to solve existing interoperability issues. This new method of making eInvoice and other digital document data available is described as a paradigm change compared to the traditional send-and-receive mode.
The discussion paper describes also the zero-corner model and some existing initiatives and experiences. However, it does not go deep to technical details but rather points out issues that companies should consider before implementing innovative solutions.