The Growth Opportunities Act of 27 March 2024 also introduced a comprehensive e-invoicing obligation in Germany. This primarily affects customers in the B2B sector. Companies must be able to accept electronical invoices from 1 January 2025. Sending (to companies) will be mandatory in stages until 2028.
A PDF file is explicitly no longer considered an e-invoice or an electronic invoice within the meaning of the law. An e-invoice must be designed in accordance with the European standard EN 16931 and enable automated processing. This applies, for example, to the existing X-Rechnung or ZUGFeRD formats. However, the problem here is that the legal term is formulated in a way that is open to all technologies and no standard has been defined. This means that new invoice formats can also be valid, provided they comply with the European standard.
Furthermore, the existing retention obligations for incoming invoices also apply. The structured part of an electronical invoice must therefore be stored in its original form and in an unalterable form.
This results in two lines of action for you:
- ensure the creation of electronical invoices: Since version 2022.1, IKAROS has generally supported the technical creation of an electronical invoice (ZUGFeRD) in collective billing (‘Billing’ financial module). As the content of an invoice is highly flexible and the format in particular also allows a lot of freedom, this was made technically available with version 2022.1 and delivered as an example for the standard layouts. If you use your own invoice layouts, these must be adapted if in doubt. However, there is at least a transitional period until the end of 2026, or until 2028 in the case of small turnover
- ensure that you are obliged to accept e-invoices: This is primarily a task for your financial accounting software. In particular, the electronical invoices must be archived (in the full version, there is only one XML file that must be archived unalterably). You should set up your processes at an early stage and ensure archiving in particular (possibly in a DMS). The first e-invoices could arrive from 01.01.2025.
In principle, there are plans to expand IKAROS for this area. The associated functionality will probably be provided with a version at the end of 2025.
- Possibility of exporting e-invoices for individual invoicing and advance payments
- Support and implementation assistance for the realisation of e-invoices in your own invoice layouts
The following extension is also conceivable (depending on your requirements):
- Support for the import of e-invoices into the booking entry for faster recording of costs. However, it is unclear which specific formats are supported.
The archiving and storage of incoming invoices and the sending of electronical invoices will not be implemented in IKAROS.