Estonia (2021 eInvoicing Country Sheet)

Legislation

The amendment of the Accounting Act, which was published on 27 December 2016, states that all public contracting authorities (central, regional and local) shall accept and process machine-processable invoices as of 1 March 2017.

In addition, this act mandates the use of specific formats, either the Estonian standard (national XML-based standard) or the European standard on eInvoicing, for any eInvoice issued to a public contracting authority as of 1 July 2017.

Accounting Act that is in force since the 1st of July 2019 states that upon transfer of goods or provision of services to a state accounting entity, local authority, legal person in public law or accounting entity which is directly or indirectly under the dominant influence of said persons or which is a contracting authority or contracting entity within the meaning of § 5 of the Public Procurement Act, the accounting entity shall submit a machine-processable invoice (structured eInvoice).

eInvoicing platform and management solutions

Estonia’s approach to processing eInvoices is decentralised whereby contracting authorities within the public sector receive eInvoices individually and not via a central platform. Consequently, several private service providers offer eInvoicing exchange services. Estonia’s private sector  eInvoicing service providers include: Billberry (@), E-arveldaja (@), Finbite (@), Telema (@) and Unifiedpost (@). [0]

All of them are linked by means of mutual agreements (the so-called roaming agreements), which allow for eInvoices to be sent from an accounting software or enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution of one operator to the software of the other operator. Additionally, a connection to Peppol is developed to simplify communication between eInvoice operators and to create more opportunities for companies for cross-border exchange of eInvoices[1].

The Estonian government does not mandate nor recommend any eInvoicing service providers and economic operators are free to choose their eInvoicing solutions. Because of the mandatory B2G eInvoicing, Estonian Ministry of Finance and RIK have agreed that businesses can use e-Financials free from charge. Only in the case that businesses use e-Financials to send eInvoice for the public sector. All entities invoicing electronically are registered in the RIK, which manages all information to transmit eInvoices to the registered companies and institutions[2].

Approach for receiving and processing

Economic operators must have an accounting software or ERP in place to generate eInvoices or can alternatively outsource the generation of eInvoices to different software providers.

The eInvoicing service providers mentioned above also provide eInvoicing management services including the creation of eInvoices. Economic operators are free to contract other private or public software providers such as Merit Tarkvara or the Centre of Registers and Information Systems (RIK).

RIK, a state agency working under the Estonian Ministry of Justice, offers an automated accounting software (e-Financials), helping entrepreneurs organise their accounting and allowing them to generate eInvoices. Unlike all service providers, RIK only charges for its services after one year, allowing the economic operators to use its e-Financials software free of charge during the first year. The Ministry of Finance and RIK agreed on the use of the e-Financials software free of charge from 2019 onwards. If a customer only uses e-Financials for sending eInvoices to public sector organisations, then there is no fee for the customer.

In all cases, the service and software providers are mandated to use a national standard based on XML, the EVS 923:2014/AC:2017, to exchange eInvoices. The European standard on eInvoicing (EN) became mandated as well, according to the deadline stipulated in the Directive. This allows the usage of any standard compliant with the EN.

No electronic signature is needed for eInvoices[3] and the archiving period for eInvoices amounts to seven years. While archiving abroad is allowed, it is conditional on a possible fast submission of eInvoices to the tax authority[4].

Within the B2G environment issuing of eInvoices is required for all suppliers to all public contracting authorities, while mandatory receiving applies to all public contracting authorities. For B2B eInvoicing is allowed, however not mandatory. No explicit requirements apply to the issuing, of eInvoices, however, for the receiving of eInvoices in the B2B environment the buyer’ consent is required[5].

eInvoicing implementation in sub-central level contracting authorities 

The implementation of the eInvoice Directive and EN standard are also mandatory at the sub-central level.

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

Businesses can send eInvoices accordingly to the Estonian national standard and the European standard. Public sector organisations have to be able to process and receive both standards.

Monitoring eInvoicing implementation 

There is no systemic monitoring system in place for B2G eInvoicing. It is possible to view from an eBusiness registry provided by the Centre of Registers and Information systems (RIK) if a private company (only) can receive eInvoices or not. 

During the first year in which Estonia accepted only eInvoices from state authorities’ cooperation partners, more than 370,000 eInvoices have been received by the state agencies, which accounts for approximately 98% of the invoices received by the public sector[6].

Additional information

According to a 2014 study conducted by the Estonian Ministry of Finance, the Estonian government would save around EUR 2.5 million annually once eInvoicing is fully operational.

More info available at the Ministry of Finance website.

 [1] (E-invoice specification Estonia, 2021), [2] (Latest news on on e-invoicing in Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, 2019), [3] (Latest news on on e-invoicing in Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, 2019), [4] (E-Invoicing Compliance: One Global Solution in 60+ Countries, 2021), [5] (Compliance updates Estonia, 2021), [6] (Sal-Saller, 2020)

Last updated:  Jun 29, 2021 11:58