Denmark (2021 eInvoicing Country Sheet)

Legislation

The Consolidated Law on Public Payments states that all-natural and legal persons must provide a bank account ("Nemkonto") into which the public authorities can make the payment. No other way of payment is foreseen by the Act.

Furthermore, the Order on electronic settlement with public authorities, Order No. 206 of 11.03.2011 includes general provisions, such as information on invoices from public entities to natural or legal persons, invoices for public entities, use of infrastructure, etc. The legislation stipulated the mandatory standard for eInvoicing in public procurement in Denmark – OIOUBL. It is provided and maintained by the Danish Business Authority.

The legislation also stipulated that public entities should use the OIO Reliable Asynchronous Secure Profile (OIORASP), which is a profile of web service standards. It makes it possible to exchange business documents (such as eInvoices) through the Internet with a high degree of security and reliability in the transactions. 

B2G eInvoicing is mandatory since 2005. It started with UBL.

eInvoicing platform and eInvoicing management solutions

The Danish government mandates the use of the NemHandel platform for exchanging eInvoices in B2G public procurement. NemHandel is a publicly developed and operated national infrastructure that enables companies to submit electronic invoices securely over the Internet. eInvoices that adhere to the OIOUBL standard and use the web services as specified in OIORASP are transmitted through NemHandel.

Economic operators can use any solution connected to NemHandel to submit eInvoices.

There are more than 100 different solutions on the market targeting different users groups and company sizes, commonly used ones are Microsoft Dynamics, Fujitsu and SAP. Also, there are over 30 solution providers, both big and small. Among them are IBM, CSC, Tradeshift, Truelink, Visma and Pagero. 

Approach for receiving and processing eInvoices

Denmark mandates the use of upcoming European standard on eInvoicing (UBL), the transmission of eInvoices through web services (compliant with OIORASP) and the use of the Danish national infrastructure (NemHandel). Only receivers of eInvoices should be registered in the NemHandelRegistry (NHR), and, therefore, have an eInvoice recipient number (GLN/EAN number). All public entities have at least one eInvoice recipient number that is publicly available on the organisation’s website. In NHR AS4 and AS2 is also possible. 

Economic operators can submit eInvoices using three main tools:

• Fully integrated eInvoice-enabled Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions (software or web-based);
• ERP solutions in combination with an open-source software provided by the Danish Business Authority, the NemHandel message handler client;
• Manually created in the web-based invoicing portals (webform),

Public entities can either establish their own access point and eInvoicing solution connecting to common public service-oriented infrastructure (OIORASP) or have an agreement with a Value Added Network Services (VANS) network provider. VANS are communication networks for exchanging electronic documents such as eInvoices. A VANS network must have an agreement on the exchange of data based on eInvoice recipient number with other network providers.

Overall, the Danish system is similar to Peppol. It is based on the same architectural principles, with a four-corner model, technical infrastructure agreements for the solution providers to sign and almost identical open standards for payload. Danish economic operators using the NemHandel network can reach users on the Peppol network.

Also, the Danish Business Authority supplies IT-vendors with guidelines, validation tools, presentation style-sheets and open source components to ease implementation of eInvoicing. It is the implementers' (IT-vendors') responsibility to adhere to the standards and develop software solutions for the different users' needs in the market.

eInvoicing implementation in sub-central level contracting authorities 

The eInvoicing model in place is based on Peppol, and OpenPeppol for receiving non-domestic suppliers eInvoices. The European standard is partially implemented and co-exist with OIOUBL. 

Denmark uses a CIUS (same as the one used at the national level) communicated via Peppol.

Status on the implementation of the European Standard on eInvoicing (EN)

The Danish Business Authority is in dialogue with the economic operators and eInvoicing solutions providers to make sure that they adhere to the European norms, once they are ready. They can do so either by conversion services or by adapting to the European standard on eInvoicing.

Implementation of the Directive 2014/55/EU as well as for the implementation of the European standard on eInvoicing, for which a bill was presented in the Danish parliament on October 2018. This plan includes, among other actions, documentation for the Danish Core Invoice Usage Specification (CIUS), syntax-mapping and the development of the Danish SMP (Regulation of competition in the telecommunications market). Denmark has also implemented eInvoicing at the level of sub-central entities.

Monitoring eInvoicing implementation 

There is no systemic monitoring system in place. The actual analytics are done using Peppol. 

Use of Core Invoicing Usage Specifications (CIUS) at national level

More information on CIUS is available here. 

Additional information

The Danish Business Authority is working on extending the implementation and support for Peppol in Denmark. The NemHandelRegistry (NHR) is now extended with Peppol eDelivery support (Service Metadata Service SMP) integrated with the European Service Metadata Locater (SML) register. This initiative will make it easier for the growing number of Peppol enabled eInvoicing service providers and end-users to adopt Peppol services in Denmark.

Denmark support Peppol BIS 3.0 eInvoices.

VERIFIED

Last updated:  Jun 29, 2021 10:48