E-invoicing mandate: a briefing for accountants advising trades clients
Written for advisers rather than for contractors. Who is caught and from when, where it goes wrong in practice, and what to recommend to the clients who cannot justify a mid-market system.
Which of my trades clients are caught first, and when?
In Germany the RECEIVE obligation caught every client on 1 January 2025 with no turnover exemption — including sole traders and Kleinunternehmer under §19 UStG. Issuing follows for clients above €800,000 prior-year turnover on 1 January 2027 and for everyone else on 1 January 2028 — except Kleinunternehmer, who are exempt from issuing (§34a UStDV). In Italy your clients are already fully within scope and have been since 2019. In France every client must be able to receive from 1 September 2026; SMEs and micro-entrepreneurs must issue from 1 September 2027. In Spain, Facturae is required today for public-sector invoicing, Verifactu software becomes mandatory in 2027 (1 July for autónomos), and the general B2B rule awaits its implementing regulation. In the Netherlands only B2G applies today; the government plans a domestic B2B obligation from 1 July 2030. The UK mandates B2B e-invoicing from April 2029.
What do I tell a one-person client who cannot justify an ERP?
That the obligation is about the invoice file, not the software category. A valid structured file in the correct format, plus a record of what was sent, satisfies the requirement — there is no rule that a Handwerksbetrieb must buy a system priced for a mid-market company. This is usually the practical sticking point for advisers: the compliance answer for a fifty-person firm is obvious and the answer for a one-van plumber is not.
Where does this actually go wrong in practice?
Two places. First, clients assume a PDF by email is compliant; it is not, because the mandate requires machine-readable data rather than an image of an invoice. Second, and more expensively, clients conflate 'sent' with 'accepted'. In Italy the SDI can reject a filing and a rejected FatturaPA was never legally issued, so a client who believes they invoiced has not — and will only discover it at reconciliation. Any tooling you recommend should keep those two states apart and show the rejection code.
Do my clients need to be able to receive before they need to issue?
In Germany, yes, and this is the most commonly missed point: the receiving duty has been in force since January 2025 while the issuing duty is still one to two years out depending on turnover. A client who is planning for 2027 or 2028 may already be non-compliant today. It is worth checking that every client can accept an XRechnung now, regardless of their issuing date.
What does Vasco do, and what does it not do?
Vasco is a job-to-invoice app for self-employed trades and small contracting firms across six European markets. It generates the required structured formats — XRechnung and ZUGFeRD, Factur-X, FatturaPA, Facturae, Peppol BIS — from the invoice the contractor already raised, and it tracks submitted separately from accepted so a rejection is visible rather than assumed away. It is not a tax filing service, not an accounting ledger, and not a substitute for your advice: it exists to make the smallest clients on your list straightforward to serve.