In April 2018, the German National IT Planning Council, IT-Planungsrat, decided to establish the mandatory use of the eDelivery PEPPOL network for the issuing of electronic invoices to the public administrations in Germany. The application schedule will be decided in October, but the decision made in April already establishes the first step for eInvoicing in the German public sector.
As part of the application of Directive 2014/55/EU on electronic invoicing in public procurement, the National IT Planning Council decided, in June 2017, to require German public administrations to receive and process invoices electronically using their XRechnung standard. The XRechnung standard is a Core Invoice User Specification (CIUS) which implements the requirements of the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) on electronic invoicing. Likewise, the German authorities can accept other formats along with XRechnung.
In April 2018 it was decided to establish a standard web service for the German public administrations for sending electronic invoices (PEPPOL). It is expected that additional steps will be taken in October 2018 on making this mandatory and the conditions of use and adherence to the eDelivery PEPPOL network for federal, regional and local authorities. Similarly, the national authorities can accept other ways of interchanging electronic invoices.
The Coordination Office for IT Standards, Koordinierungsstelle für IT-Standars (KoSIT), which is included in the e-Government division of the central administration in the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen and is a permanent organisation of the National IT Planning Council, has the responsibility of maintaining the XRechnung model and will also become the PEPPOL authority.
Taking all of this into account, the next steps to be taken are to configure the PEPPOL authority and map CIUS XRechnung in German legislation established in PEPPOL BIS Billing 3.0 CIUS. In this way it will be completely ready to make the decision in October which will adjust the schedule and conditions of its use, as well as the adhesion and the choice of those who are required to use the eDelivery PEPPOL network.
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SERES has written a White Paper on “Electronic Invoicing in Europe” which sets out in detail the progress that is expected for eInvoicing in Europe (Albania, Germany, Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Denmark, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Norway, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Romania, Serbia, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and Ukraine).
It is the perfect guide to understand what your company is facing if it wants to use eInvoicing globally.
