eInvoicing in Austria

Legislation

The provision of Section 5 of the Austrian ICT Consolidation Act from 2012 mandates that all contracting partners of the federal government, including foreign contracting partners, must only submit structured electronic invoices for the provision of goods and services to government departments[1].

eInvoicing is mandatory only for the federal government although a few exceptions do not require eInvoicing. These include immediate payments, leasing contracts, insurance contracts, etc.

The national Transposition of Directive 2014/55/EU is contained in BVergG 2018 §368. It only mandates the reception of eInvoices on procured good and services that are above the threshold.

eInvoicing platform and management solutions

Austria mandates the use of the Federal Service Portal (Unternehmensserviceportal – USP), the central processing eInvoicing platform of the federal government to receive eInvoices. eInvoices are sent to the Austrian Federal Government through the Federal Service Portal. The portal is operated by the Federal Computing Centre (BRZ). A one-time free-of-charge registration step is necessary before eInvoices can be transmitted (source).

Solution providers in Austria can choose their preferred eInvoicing platform for submitting eInvoices. There are about 60 software providers who can generate structured eInvoices in the country. However, any used solution (except for solutions using the Peppol infrastructure eDelivery network) must connect to the Federal Service Portal (USP) that provides authentication services necessary for the submission of eInvoices and to the E-Rechnung.gv.at, which is a data transfer “method” for the submission of eInvoices specifically to the Austrian Public Sector. The federal government’s eInvoicing service, E-rechnung.gv.at, which has been operating since 2012, will be able to understand UBL and CII syntaxes. Four out of nine of Austria’s federal states are already connected to this system. The latest version of the national standard (i.e. ebInterface version 5) takes into account the EN and the convertibility to both syntaxes.

Additionally, the Federal Economic chamber maintains a list of service operators, connected to USP, through which the automatic electronic transmission of invoices to federal agencies can be performed.

The BBG (Bundesbeschaffung Ges.m.b.H) is the federal public procurement agency from austria. Economic operators which are comimissioned over contracts provided by the BBG has to sent invoices to the BBG eInvoices portal. BBG has the legal obligation to evaluate statistical data from the invoices. The BBG invoices portal is connected to the federal government eInvoicing service.  

Delivery of eInvoices to this service (E-Rechnung.gv.at) is free of charge for the user.

Approach for receiving and processing

The Austrian federal government receives and processes eInvoices from economic operators supported by the following solutions:

• The Federal Government receives eInvoices created by means of a direct eInvoice upload, manual eInvoice creation via web-form or a web-service connection.
• The Federal Business Service Portal (USP) provides authentication services necessary for the submission of eInvoices and does not require further use of electronic signatures

Thus, companies submit eInvoices via E-rechnung.gv.at after authenticating in the Federal Business Service Portal (USP) or as paper, e-mail, PDF etc. via a solution provider managing the transmission. Solution providers already connected to the Federal Business Service Portal (USP) can forward their clients’ invoices without the need for individual registration.

After the submission, the eInvoices are stored as automatically generated PDFs. This is followed by an automatic pre-acquisition of the invoice receipt document, linking to the archive, which then initiates the processing workflow. The eInvoice processing is integrated into the federal budgeting and bookkeeping system process. Once received by public administrations, eInvoices are processed at federal level through automated and integrated systems linked to the workflow and core systems of the public administrations.

While the processing of eInvoices is automated and integrated into the federal government, it widely differs for all other public entities. For example, in cases when organisations do not have ERP systems in place, eInvoices are processed manually.

eInvoicing implementation in sub-central level contracting authorities 

At sub-central level, the eInvoicing system is based on Peppol, used by 50 000 contracting authorities. The reception of eInvoices on a sub-central level is not organised by law. They are free to join eRechnung.gv.at, the federal government solution, as receivers volontarily or implement their solution.

The EN is partially implemented. Some issues related to the certain attributes of the eInvoicing format impacted its take-up. The issues are mainly related to the unique identifiers (for suppliers) which are considered as misleading. 

CIUS-AT-NAT and CIUS-AT-GOV are the CIUS in operation and are communicated through workshops, information on websites and internet forums.

The communication is mainly done through the Austrian eInvoicing standard ebInterface. On this ebInterface, the Chamber of Economy provides a word plugin for the creation of eInvoices. There is also a dedicated eInvoicing portal. 

The main identified benefits of the implementation of eInvoicing at the sub-central level are cost and operational savings, the reduction of administrative burden and optimization of time to payments and the contribution to process automation. 

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

The latest amendment of the act on public procurement (BVergG 2018), transposed Directive 2014/55/EU. This act came into force in 2018. As mentioned in the section "Additional information“ the necessary technical requirements of the European standard on eInvoicing are covered in the existing portal e-Rechnung.gv.at.

Monitoring eInvoicing implementation 

The monitoring is implemented only at the central level. 

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

Austria has two CIUSes in place: one for the national level (complying with Austrian VAT law) and another one for the government sector’s specific obligations (based on the previous CIUS on VAT law). These two CIUSes are approved by the Federal Minister of Finance.

Additional information

Federal Procurement office (BBG) and the Austrian Federal Computing Centre (BRZ) work together in different EU initiatives (CEN/e-SENS/Peppol).

The Austrian government also prepared a specific plan at the federal level for the implementation of the European standard on eInvoicing. The mandatory Portal (e-Rechnung.gv.at) will be extended to allow Austrian public entities to receive eInvoices according to EN-16931. A federal procurement law (source, page 8[CRG1] ) is in place to transpose Directive 2014/55/EU and an agreement exists at both the federal and state level, calling on the states to adhere to what exists at the federal level (SM2).

In Austria, there will be a minimal transposition and the obligation will fall only for contracting authorities above the EU thresholds. The deadline for the central procuring authorities to comply is the same as the EU date, i.e. 18 April 2019. The sub-central authorities will have an additional year to comply with the Directive, as permitted by the Directive.

For Austria, the main challenge will be to overcome the PDF/document-based eInvoice system currently in use in the public sector, therefore no further political steps will be taken beyond the scope of the Directive.

[1] Government departments include all federal ministries and their subordinate departments, as well as the Parliament, the Office of the Federal President, the Administrative Court, the Constitutional Court, the Austrian Ombudsman Board and the Austrian Court of Audit.

Last updated:  Jul 06, 2021 11:38