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Poland puts eInvoicing plans into action with the help of CEF tools and services

From plan to action

Although Poland was one of the first countries to introduce a legal foundation for the use of e-invoices, their uptake by businesses and public administrations has been slow. In fact, Poland’s legislation covering the issuing, sending and storing of e-invoices was passed in 2005, five years before the equivalent EU regulation. So, when the time came to give e-invoicing a boost in practice, the Ministry of Economic Development decided to create a single national e-invoicing platform (PEF) – just to make sure that the solution would be available to all Polish public entities and in this way, fulfil the obligations imposed by the European Directive on electronic invoicing (2014/55/EU). PEF was launched in April 2019 and before the end of the year, the platform had more than 12,000 registered contracting authorities and 655 suppliers that had sent 1,600 e-invoices.

Despite PEF’s advanced functionalities in sending structured e-invoices, their automated receiving and processing remained a challenge. In order to achieve the first implementation of a fully automated e-invoicing process from sending to the receiving and processing of a European standards compliant e-invoice, a consortium was formed to undertake the task (CEF Action No 2016-PL-IA-0106). The objective was to fulfil the European Directive in a way that would create a national reference model for an advanced automated e-invoicing implementation between public purchasing authorities and their suppliers.

"CEF provides a set of tools and services that helped our consortium upgrade existing IT systems to comply with European standards in a fast and efficient manner. The resulting solution enables participating public authorities to automatically receive and process structured e-invoices. The CEF Action also brought about pioneer experience in e-invoicing, resulting in a new methodology, which will encourage many more Polish public purchasing authorities and companies to get involved and enjoy the benefits of automated e-invoicing". – Tadeusz Rudnicki, Senior Consultant, The Institute of Logistics and Warehousing

Learn more about eInvoicing

Poland steps up with a national solution

The deadline for going digital was set by the European Directive on electronic invoicing, which mandated that as of mid-April 2019, all European public organisations must be able to receive structured e-invoices. In Poland, the implementation of the new law followed two tracks – one legislative, to transpose the Directive into national law; and one technical, to enable the exchange of e-invoices. The resulting Polish Act that entered into force on 18 April 2019 embraces the spirit of the European Directive, as it also encourages public authorities to process structured e-invoices. The Act came into effect for all levels of public authorities at the same time.

On the technical track, Poland decided to go for a single national platform for all public entities and their suppliers. This is because the European standard (EN-16931) on e-invoicing, referred to in the Directive, was new at the time and the local market for compliant solutions still immature. 

All public authorities have to register their accounts on the platform, hence every B2G invoice must be sent in the required structured format (XML) through the PEF. Private businesses may use the platform free of charge, however, they are also free to choose any other solution available in the market – this way they do not have to adapt their existing solutions to the PEF standards. In such a case, the company’s service provider will connect to PEF and send the e-documents on behalf of the company.

In addition to e-invoices, PEF also exchanges other electronic documents, such as orders, dispatch advices and receipt advices between procurement parties. Thanks to the structured nature of data, none of them require manual intervention by humans during their exchange, even though manual operations are still possible for less advanced users. End-users can use the PEF through a web service or a desktop application, or opt to exchange e-invoices to or from their own system, thanks to the multi-client API that PEF provides.

How PEF was complemented with CEF

The CEF Action was coordinated by the Institute of Logistics and Warehousing (ILiM), which also served as the technical adviser, supporting the consortium in e-invoicing standards implementation. The consortium achieved its objectives through the following tasks:

• deployment of new functionalities in public entities’ IT systems (at City Hall, the Ministry, MPK),
• implementation of the direct delivery of e-invoices to the City Hall using GLN identifiers delivered by GS1 Poland (as the foundation for e-invoice electronic addressing),
• integration of said IT systems with eDelivery (PEF platform based on OpenPEPPOL Access Points),
• internal technical and functional testing of new solutions and their final validation by CEF,
• training of the staff and preparation of technical documentation.

The consortium employed the PEPPOL network in the e-document exchange component. The PEPPOL network is based on the technical specifications supported by the European Commission’s CEF Building Blocks: eDelivery and eInvoicing. From eDelivery, the consortium used the PEPPOL Access Point specifications and a reference implementation.

From eInvoicing, the consortium used documentation and support services, which helped to implement the European standard faster through workshops and testing. The testing service ensured the solution’s conformance in a fast and efficient manner, thanks to the support team offered by CEF. Also talking with other Member States' e-invoicing teams through the CEF eInvoicing Community was immensely helpful.

In the end, the public authorities engaged in this Action can now receive e-invoices, as long as the invoice is EN-16931 and PEPPOL BIS Billing 3.0 compliant. Guidelines for implementing the PEPPOL BIS specifications (also chosen as CIUS) and related technical services are available to all on a dedicated website eFaktura.gov.pl. No significant changes were made to the CIUS, hence the website merely explains the specification in Polish business terms and interpretations.

Benefits

The main benefits of centralised e-invoicing for Polish public entities are cost and operational savings, the automation of the invoicing process, the reduction of manual administrative burden, the optimisation of payment times and the facilitation of cross-border e-invoicing. E-invoicing is also expected to help the Polish tax authorities collect VAT more efficiently, thereby closing the current VAT gap.

CEF tools and services helped the Polish public sector consortium members to establish new and advanced standards-compliant functionalities faster and in a sound approach. Here are the benefits of CEF support to the consortium:

• CEF eInvoicing: fast and efficient implementation through readily available specifications, workshops, conformance testing services and peer support (the eInvoicing Community)
• CEF eDelivery: testing time was cut down by a few months, thanks to the CEF support team and a reference implementation
• CEF Grant: support for upgrading and adapting IT systems to the new European standard, which also covered dissemination activities, such as training and seminars

By using the common CEF supported standards and specifications, the Polish public authorities can now exchange e-invoices and e-documents across the borders with any other entity using the same specifications in Europe. This realises the CEF objective of digitally connecting Europe, as well as the European Commission’s policy of creating a Digital Single Market.

Next step: Private sector

Electronic invoicing is yet to be made mandatory in the private sector. It would be a natural step to introduce this obligation to economic operators – the invoice issuers in public procurement – however, the date for such an obligation is currently not decided. Before extending legislation to businesses, the Polish government wants to first assess how other EU Member States plan on approaching this. Poland also seeks to involve industries in defining additional sector-specific CIUS extensions to better meet the e-invoicing needs in areas, such as telecommunications, energy and gas.

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