Sweden expands B2G electronic invoicing in April 2019.

Electronic invoicing has been a reality in Sweden since 2008, when Ekonomistyrningsverket - ESV (Sweden’s National Financial Management Authority) established mandatory electronic invoicing for the agencies of Sweden's central government.

In Sweden, two laws mandate the use of electronic invoicing for central government authorities: the Ordinance on accounting for authorities (Förordning (2000: 606) om myndigheters bokföring §21f), and the Ordinance for electronic information exchange among state authorities (Förordning (2003: 770) om statliga myndigheters elektroniska informationsutbyte § 3). Three accepted electronic invoice formats are indicated in these: Svefaktura, PEPPOL BIS invoice and SFTI Fulltextfaktur. In addition, the platform through which the Swedish central government can send and receive invoices is operated by solution providers under agreements managed by the Kammarkollegiet (Legal, Financial and Administrative Services Agency).

Since becoming mandatory, electronic invoicing in Sweden has been developing and, in December 2015, it was established that from November 2018 all government agencies had to be connected to PEPPOL to interchange their electronic invoices.

Likewise, in recent years the Swedish government has been working on legislation to adapt the eInvoicing system to European needs, and therefore implement  the European Union’s B2G electronic invoicing directive and extend the requirement to all local and regional authorities.

This legislation was approved in June 2018 and will require all state suppliers (central, regional and local authorities) to send their invoices in electronic format from 1 April 2019. In other words, all invoices related to public procurement will be electronic from this date. In this sense, the proposed legislation, in keeping with the situation in other northern European countries such as Denmark and Norway, is designed to increase the use of PEPPOL and to ensure that by April 2019 all Swedish public entities send and receive invoices in the PEPPOL BIS INVOICE 3.0 format.