Estonia, Financial Services, Internet, Legislation, Technology

"Public sector institutions have been obligate to accept e-invoices already from March of this year, but unfortunately a large number has yet to create such a capability for themselves. Our first goal is to inform institutions, who do not yet follow the law and support them in transitioning to using e-invoices in cooperation with representatives of the public and private sector," Raigo Uukkivi, deputy secretary general of public governance policy at the Finance Ministry said.

A million invoices are sent to public sector institutions a year, while 24% of all invoices sent are e-invoices. Altogether 90% of central government institutions have created the capability for accepting e-invoices. The share stands at 40% in the rest of the public sector. The aim is to transition to full use of e-invoices in the public sector in 2018.

"Machine-processable settlement is the future of Europe. Estonia has gained global recognition as an e-state. At the same time, our exchange of invoices has got stuck in pdf-invoices. They are easy to send by e-mail, but in reality they do not enable reducing the manual labor of accountants very significantly," CEO of the Estonian Association of Information Technology and Telecommunications Juri Joema said.

According to the valid Accounting Act, all public sector institutions are obligated to create the capability for accepting e-invoices from suppliers as of March 1, 2017. The aim is to make using e-invoices as comfortable as possible, promoting all invoices being submitted to the public sector as e-invoices. The implementation of e-invoices will reduce the expenses of both the party to submit it and the party to receive it.