Guide · updated 11 July 2026
Almost everything written about EU e-invoicing is aimed at the company SENDING the invoice. But the obligations that arrive first are on the RECEIVING side, and they are already in force in several countries. This is the short version of what each one asks of you when an invoice lands in your inbox.
In force since 1 January 2025, with no exceptions — including small businesses, landlords opting into VAT and associations. An email inbox is enough as a channel, and your supplier no longer needs your consent. The formats are XRechnung, which is pure XML with no readable document at all, and ZUGFeRD, a PDF/A-3 with the XML embedded. Issuing becomes mandatory on 1 January 2027 above 800,000 EUR of prior-year turnover, and on 1 January 2028 for everyone.
From 1 September 2026, with no size exemption — the postponement only covers ISSUING by smaller companies. And receiving is not passive: you must appoint an approved private platform and be listed in the central directory, otherwise your suppliers simply cannot invoice you. The public portal (PPF) was abandoned, so a private platform is the only route for B2B. The format is usually Factur-X, which is the same standard as ZUGFeRD.
Mandatory for every VAT holder since 1 January 2024, including flat-rate taxpayers. The catch for receivers: the PDF your supplier emails you is a courtesy copy — the legal document is the XML that passed through the SdI, and it often arrives wrapped in a .p7m envelope that no ordinary program opens. Technical specification 1.9.1 has applied since 15 May 2026.
Verifactu applies under the common regime and TicketBAI in the Basque provinces; they are incompatible. What matters for you is the QR: from 2027 every invoice issued in Spain carries one declaring the issuer's tax ID, the invoice number, the date and the total. Everyone scans them one by one with a phone; almost nobody does the free check that comes first — does the QR match what the paper says?
QR codes have been mandatory since 1 January 2022 and the ATCUD document code since 1 January 2023. For a receiver there is a direct financial consequence: a non-compliant QR can block your VAT deduction. And the Portuguese QR is technically better for checking than the Spanish one, because it is not a link — it carries the whole invoice inside, so its arithmetic can be verified offline.
Drop any of the five formats — Facturae, Factur-X, FatturaPA, XRechnung or Peppol UBL — and read who invoiced whom, for how much, and whether the figures add up. Thirty at once produce a spreadsheet. No signup, no installation and no AI: these are structured data, so reading them is exact, free and instant.
We are not an access point, an approved platform or a transmission route: nothing is sent to your suppliers or to any tax authority. We do not replace your archiving obligation either — Germany requires eight years of the structured original, Italy and Portugal ten. And we keep nothing: documents are processed and deleted.
No. In Germany a plain PDF has counted as an «other invoice» since 2025, and in France an ordinary emailed PDF is not an e-invoice under the reform. Portugal is the exception until 31 December 2026, and only for compliant PDFs.
It depends on your supplier's country, not yours. That is why reading only one of them is not enough — and why this site reads all five and detects the format on its own.
No. Processed and deleted. And without AI: structured data does not need guessing.