25 terms every tax, finance and IT team meets on the road to compliance — from EN 16931 and Peppol to clearance, CTC and ViDA — each explained in plain language and linked to the deeper guides.
The exchange of an invoice as structured, machine-readable data (typically XML) between a supplier’s and a buyer’s systems — and, increasingly, the tax authority. A PDF or scanned image is not an e-invoice in the legal sense used by most mandates, because it cannot be processed automatically without interpretation.
An invoice issued in a defined data format where every field (seller tax ID, line items, VAT amounts) sits in a designated element a machine can read reliably. Structured formats are the foundation of every e-invoicing mandate; EN 16931 defines the most widely used semantic model.
The European standard defining the semantic data model of an electronic invoice — which fields an invoice must and may contain and what they mean. National formats such as XRechnung and Factur-X/ZUGFeRD are implementations of EN 16931, and the EU’s ViDA reform builds on it.
An OASIS XML syntax widely used to express invoices and other business documents. Many mandates specify UBL 2.1 as the required syntax — the UAE’s PINT AE format, for example, is UBL-based.
An international network and set of specifications for exchanging structured business documents through accredited access points — "connect once, reach everyone." Originally a European public-procurement project, Peppol is now the backbone of e-invoicing in countries from Belgium to Singapore, Australia, Japan and the UAE. See how the 4-corner and 5-corner models work.
The Peppol Business Interoperability Specification — the standard document profiles (built on EN 16931 and UBL) that participants on the Peppol network exchange. When a mandate says "Peppol BIS Billing 3.0," it means invoices must conform to this profile.
PINT is Peppol’s international invoice model, designed so jurisdictions outside Europe can specialise it to local tax rules. PINT AE is the United Arab Emirates’ specialisation used in its 2026–27 rollout; other examples include PINT JP (Japan) and PINT SG (Singapore).
A certified service provider that connects a business to the Peppol network, validates documents, and transmits them to the counterparty’s access point. In five-corner regimes the access point (in the UAE, an Accredited Service Provider) also reports tax data to the authority.
The exchange architecture where supplier (corner 1) and buyer (corner 4) each connect through their own access point (corners 2 and 3), and the access points interoperate over a network such as Peppol. No direct connection between trading partners is needed. Diagram and full explanation.
The 4-corner model extended with the tax authority as a fifth corner receiving invoice data in near real time, without holding invoices for pre-approval. Formally "Decentralised CTC and Exchange" (DCTCE). The UAE and France are the flagship implementations. Diagram and full explanation.
A regime where each invoice must be submitted to and approved ("cleared") by a government platform before it is legally valid — the state sits in the middle of every transaction. Italy’s SdI, Poland’s KSeF and most of Latin America work this way. Diagram and full explanation.
The umbrella term for any regime giving the tax authority transaction-level visibility as business happens — clearance, real-time reporting and five-corner exchange are all CTC variants. The global trend is from periodic VAT returns toward CTC.
A CTC variant where the invoice travels directly between the parties but its data must be reported to the tax authority in (near) real time — Hungary’s RTIR and Spain’s SII are classic examples. France uses "e-reporting" specifically for transactions outside its e-invoicing scope, such as B2C and cross-border sales. Diagram.
The traditional approach: invoices are exchanged freely in an agreed format and the tax authority relies on audits after the fact rather than real-time visibility. Germany’s current phase is post-audit with mandatory structured formats; a reporting layer is expected later under ViDA. Diagram.
The EU reform package adopted in 2025 that, among other pillars, makes structured e-invoicing the default for intra-EU B2B supplies and introduces near-real-time Digital Reporting Requirements by 2030. ViDA also removes the need for member states to seek derogations before mandating domestic e-invoicing — accelerating national mandates across Europe.
The ViDA pillar requiring transaction data for intra-EU B2B supplies to be reported digitally to tax authorities within days of issue, replacing recapitulative statements. National CTC systems must converge with the DRR model by the early 2030s.
Germany’s national XML invoice standard implementing EN 16931, required in German B2G invoicing and one of the accepted formats under the German B2B mandate. Pure XML — no human-readable layer — unlike the hybrid Factur-X/ZUGFeRD.
A Franco-German hybrid format embedding EN 16931-conformant XML inside a human-readable PDF/A-3 — one file that both a person and a machine can read. ZUGFeRD (Germany) and Factur-X (France) are technically aligned; profiles from EN 16931 level upward qualify as structured invoices under the German mandate.
Italy’s central clearance platform (SdI) and its national XML format (FatturaPA). Italy was the first EU country with a broad B2B clearance mandate (2019) and remains the reference case for the clearance model in Europe.
Poland’s national e-invoicing clearance system. Invoices are issued through KSeF, which assigns each a unique identifier; the mandatory phase for large taxpayers began in 2026 with wider waves following.
Saudi Arabia’s tax authority (ZATCA) and its e-invoicing platform (Fatoora). Phase 1 (generation) started in 2021; Phase 2 (integration, with clearance of standard invoices and reporting of simplified ones) has rolled out in waves by turnover since January 2023.
India’s Invoice Registration Portal (IRP) validates B2B invoices and returns an Invoice Reference Number (IRN) with a signed QR code — a registration-style CTC. The turnover threshold has been lowered repeatedly, now capturing most of the B2B economy.
Many regimes (Saudi Arabia, India, Portugal, the UAE for simplified invoices) require a machine-readable QR code on the human-readable invoice, encoding key data such as seller tax ID, timestamp and VAT amount — enabling instant field verification.
The legal obligation to store invoices in their original electronic form, guaranteeing integrity and readability for a retention period that varies by country (commonly 5–11 years). Archiving rules apply on top of exchange rules and often have their own location and format constraints.
Mandates define which transaction types they cover: business-to-government (usually first), business-to-business (the current global wave), and business-to-consumer (often handled via reporting rather than e-invoicing, as in France’s e-reporting). A country’s "scope" section on this site sets out exactly who and what is in.