Nevertheless, electronic invoicing will become widely accepted in Germany in 20 too, and companies are well advised to equip themselves with appropriate digital solutions for E-Invoicing in the near future.īut against the backdrop of tight national budgets and slowing economic growth, the motivation in the EU member states to actually collect more of the expected tax will certainly continue to rise. Actually southern and eastern EU countries such as Italy, Spain, Croatia and Hungary are outpacing Germany in the implementation of the European Directive 2014/55/EU. Germany is by no means one of the pioneers when it comes to electronic invoicing. The prediction is that this trend will clearly continue and that the number of paper invoices and PDF invoices will be reduced to a bare minimum by 2021. Structured and hybrid invoice formats are now having a share of more than 50%. Whereas in the European Union in 2017 70% of all invoices were still exchanged on paper and 22% in the form of PDF files that cannot be processed electronically, the tide has been turning. In any case, the direction is clear as the European Commission has already done everything necessary to further encourage this move away from paper invoices by gradually making electronic invoicing mandatory. This truism attributed to Mark Twain also applies to E-Invoicing, but it is not so much a question of "whether" but rather "when" electronic invoicing will have replaced paper invoicing on a large scale. "It's difficult to make predictions, especially about the future". The figure shows, for example, a ZUGFeRD invoice containing a human-readable PDF with structured invoice data in an XML format. Technically, this can be achieved by embedding an XML structure in a PDF file. Hybrid invoice formats avoid this disadvantage by combining the machine-readable structured format and the human-readable visual representation. The recipients must therefore first visualize the structured electronic invoices for internal invoice verification, release and subsequent archiving. Structured invoice formats in their pure form, so-called EDI data (Electronic Data Interchange), are not readable by humans. Instead, recipients expect electronic invoices to be in a structured format that can be understood automatically. The simple sending of invoices as PDF files does not meet these requirements, as the recipients cannot automatically process such PDF files. Source (translated): §4a Para.2 German EGovG the format enables the invoice to be processed automatically and electronically. it is issued, transmitted and received in a structured electronic format andĢ. In response to the European Directive 2014/55/EU the legislator defines an electronic invoice in the Act to promote electronic government (E-Government Act - EgovG) as follows:ġ. Since then, electronic invoices can also be sent without an electronic signature and, for example, simply by e-mail. Due to this, German legislation has placed the electronic invoice on an equal footing with the paper invoice (01 July 2011). Such a process is complex and expensive and not very environmentally friendly (paper, transport etc.). It is not very efficient to print, envelope, stamp and send a digital invoice on paper - just to have it manually captured and digitized again by the recipient before it can finally be booked and paid for. Invoices received in paper form and converted to electronic formats do not fall under the definition of electronic invoices under the VAT Act. The transmission/reception channels available include e-mail, DE-Mail, e-mail, computer fax, fax server, web download, Peppol or web service. invoices in PDF/TIF JPEG/Word format or e-mail text) and An electronic invoice is an invoice that is issued, transmitted and received in an electronic format.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |