Mandatory e-invoicing in the EU: deadlines by country and how dealerships and workshops should prepare, as of November 2026

EU e-invoicing deadlines as of November 2026: ViDA, national obligations by country and preparing invoicing for cars, servicing, parts and deposits.

Key findings

The ViDA package allows Member States to introduce mandatory domestic e-invoicing from 14 April 2025. National digital reporting systems must be aligned with the EU model by 1 January 2035.
In Belgium and Croatia, mandatory e-invoicing has applied to the relevant domestic business transactions since 1 January 2026. In Poland, receiving invoices via KSeF has been mandatory since 1 February 2026. Issuing invoices there is being phased in from 1 February or 1 April 2026, depending on company size. Italy has had the obligation since 2019.
Further deadlines: 1 January 2027 for Slovakia and for businesses outside the VAT system in Croatia, 6 October 2027 or 6 October 2028 for Spain depending on turnover, and 1 January 2028 for Slovenia.
A PDF sent by email is not a structured e-invoice. A dealer needs to link sales, servicing, deposits and the VAT treatment with accounting and the delivery channel of the country concerned. It needs a separate procedure for receiving invoices from suppliers.
As of November 2026, Czechia has no general mandatory B2B e-invoicing. However, a dealer group must meet the obligations of its companies in the countries where the obligation applies.

Mandatory e-invoicing in the EU is changing how dealerships and workshops transmit accounting data to customers, suppliers and the tax authorities. The invoice must have a structure that the other party's system can receive and process. It often travels via a national platform or network, and reporting to the tax authorities comes on top of this. Each country follows its own timetable and a different scope of obligations. A dealer group with companies in several countries may therefore face several different deadlines at once.

What does mandatory e-invoicing in the EU mean, and what does ViDA bring?

An electronic invoice in this sense contains structured, machine-readable data. The accounting system takes the supplier, customer, line items, amounts and tax details from it without manual re-keying. Neither a PDF nor a scanned document performs this function.

The content of a structured invoice is described by the European standard EN 16931. Slovak legislation transposing ViDA into national law, for example, builds on it. The standard harmonises the meaning of the data, but does not define a single European mailbox. Belgium uses the Peppol network, Poland the national KSeF system and Italy the state exchange system Sistema di Interscambio.

The ViDA (VAT in the Digital Age) package links e-invoicing with digital reporting of transactions. For cross-border B2B supplies within the EU, it introduces mandatory e-invoicing and digital reporting as a common European regime. For national obligations, it sets the following dates:

Date	What it means for a dealership or workshop	Source
14 April 2025	Member States may introduce national mandatory e-invoicing and do not have to wait for the common European regime.	European Commission
1 January 2035	Existing national digital reporting systems must be aligned with the EU model.	European Commission

The European framework does not postpone national deadlines. A Belgian workshop has been invoicing under Belgian rules since 1 January 2026, and a Polish dealer has been receiving invoices via KSeF since 1 February 2026.

For operations, it is useful to separate three layers:

creating a correct invoice in the DMS,
delivering it through the channel prescribed by the country concerned,
any reporting to the tax authorities.

Errors most often arise in the first layer, because sales, the workshop and accounting keep data separately. Omnetic DMS Core holds one shared record of the car, customer, jobs and money. The Accounting module links every document from sales, the workshop, the parts department and the bank to it. Data is therefore not re-keyed between systems. The national format and delivery channel are dealt with separately for each market.

E-invoicing: deadlines by country as of November 2026

For each country, distinguish between receiving and issuing. A company may be required to receive electronic invoices before it has to issue them itself. The domestic obligation applies to the relevant domestic transactions, not automatically to sales abroad.

Countries where the obligation already applies

Country	Issuing and receiving	What it means for a dealership and workshop	Source
Italy	Mandatory issuing via Sistema di Interscambio for the relevant domestic supplies to businesses (B2B) and consumers (B2C) since 1 January 2019. Since 1 January 2024, the obligation has also covered the remaining taxpayers under the flat-rate forfettario regime.	The sale of a car or a repair for a private customer is also invoiced electronically.	Italian Chamber of Deputies
Belgium	Mandatory issuing and receiving of structured invoices since 1 January 2026. It applies to the relevant domestic transactions between VAT-registered businesses. The standard is Peppol BIS.	A dealership or workshop that serves only private customers must also receive structured invoices from suppliers of parts and services.	Belgian e-invoicing portal
Poland	Receiving via KSeF mandatory since 1 February 2026. Issuing from the same date for taxpayers with sales including VAT of over PLN 200 million in 2024, for others from 1 April 2026.	The transitional exemption until the end of 2026 applies only to issuing and covers monthly sales documented by invoices of up to PLN 10,000 including VAT. Receiving via KSeF is not affected by the postponement.	Polish tax administration
Croatia	VAT payers have been issuing and receiving e-invoices for the relevant domestic transactions since 1 January 2026. Businesses outside the VAT system have been receiving them since the same date.	The invoice travels between access points. In addition, the systems of both the issuer and the recipient send a fiscalisation message to the tax authorities.	Croatian Tax Administration

Peppol is a network for exchanging business documents, and Peppol BIS sets the rules for their structure. KSeF and Sistema di Interscambio are state systems. Connecting to one channel therefore does not solve the other countries.

Further deadlines in 2027 and 2028

Country	Deadline and scope	Impact on preparation	Source
Croatia	From 1 January 2027, businesses outside the VAT system will also issue e-invoices.	A smaller business that currently only receives e-invoices must also be able to issue them by then.	Croatian Tax Administration
Slovakia	From 1 January 2027, domestic VAT payers will issue electronic invoices for the relevant domestic supplies to domestic businesses and legal entities. Recipients must ensure they can receive them.	The obligation also covers advance payments received. The invoice indicates the reverse charge and the margin scheme for second-hand goods.	Slov-Lex
Spain	From 6 October 2027, mandatory issuing and receiving between domestic businesses with VAT turnover of over EUR 8 million in the previous calendar year. For others, from 6 October 2028.	A dealer group assigns the deadline to each company separately according to its turnover.	Spanish Tax Agency
Slovenia	From 1 January 2028, mandatory mutual exchange of electronic invoices between the relevant domestic business entities.	Preparation must cover both issued and received documents.	Slovenian Government

Czechia: no general mandatory B2B e-invoicing

As of November 2026, Czechia has no general mandatory B2B e-invoicing (European Commission country sheet for Czechia). A Czech dealership therefore continues to invoice on its domestic market as before. The Belgian or Polish timetable does not apply to it just because it sells cars abroad.

The situation is different for a group that has a subsidiary or branches in Poland, Slovakia or Croatia. Draw up the overview of obligations by individual legal entity. For each one, determine who issues the invoice, to whom, for what supply and whether it is a domestic or cross-border transaction.

How will e-invoicing affect car sales, servicing and parts?

Most errors arise between the business event and the accounting document. A car sale may be agreed with the driver, while the car is owned by a leasing company and the repair is partly paid for by an insurer. Invoicing must use the correct customer role, not the first contact on the job. A structured invoice will not hide such an error. The recipient will reject it or process it with incorrect data.

Operational situation	What must be linked	Typical error
Sale of a car to a business customer	Deal, legal customer, vehicle identification, VAT treatment and invoice.	The invoice takes the details of the car's user instead of the actual customer.
Service job paid for by several payers	Labour and parts assigned to the customer, warranty or the insurer, and separate documents for each payer.	The cost split stays in a note and is not carried over to the invoice.
Buying and selling parts	Order, stock movement, goods received note and the supplier's or customer's invoice.	The invoice passes the technical check, but the quantity or place of delivery does not match.
Deposit for a car or repair	Payment received, advance payment invoice and final invoice for the same transaction.	The deposit and the final invoice are created in separate records with no link between them.
Used car under the margin scheme, reverse-charge supplies	Correctly determined VAT treatment carried over into the structured data.	A generic template fills in the standard VAT treatment.

For servicing, it helps if the split between payers is created on the job itself. The Workshop module manages the service job from the quote through vehicle reception, parts and planning to invoicing. Line items can be split between the customer, warranty and the insurer.

Deposits belong in the design from the outset

In Slovakia, the obligation from 1 January 2027 also covers advance payments received for the relevant domestic supplies. It is therefore not enough to prepare only final invoices for a delivered car or a completed repair. A deposit recorded in a separate spreadsheet means that sales and accounting are working with a different status of the same transaction. In e-invoicing, such a deposit shows up as a missing or duplicate document.

The VAT treatment must carry through from purchase to sale

Slovak legislation explicitly provides for indicating the reverse charge and the margin scheme for second-hand goods (taxation of the margin). For used cars, this means that the treatment determined at purchase must carry through to the sales invoice. It must not get lost along the way when the vehicle is prepared or transferred between branches.

An incorrectly chosen VAT treatment cannot be corrected by the structured format. In addition, the possibility of deducting VAT depends on the treatment of the specific car and the buyer's situation, not just on whether the buyer is a business. The VAT treatment of a specific transaction is determined by the accountant or tax adviser. The system should keep that decision unchanged right through to the invoice sent.

What to prepare in the DMS and accounting

A standalone invoicing portal can send the document. But if the accountant re-enters the customer, line items and amounts from the DMS into it, a manual step is added and with it errors. The invoice also becomes detached from the job, the parts and the split between payers. Preparation therefore starts at the source of the document and ends with its processing by the recipient.

1. Split transactions and responsibilities

For each legal entity, list domestic and cross-border sales, purchases, deposits and corrective documents. Each flow needs an owner:

sales is responsible for the commercial data,
the workshop for the job line items,
accounting for the accounting and tax settings,
IT for transmission and error monitoring.

The result is an overview of which business event creates which document and where it is sent.

2. Standardise master data

VAT numbers, company names and billing addresses should have one managed place. It must be equally clear where the VAT treatment, the date of supply and the link to the original document come from. Correcting the export only after the invoice has been issued means that the DMS holds different content from what was sent. Make corrections in the source process instead.

3. Track the status of every invoice

The statuses "created" and "sent" are not enough. Operations must also see transmission errors, rejections and successful processing by the other party. Each error status needs a responsible person and a next step. Otherwise, the salesperson considers the deal closed while the invoice sits in the queue of rejected documents.

4. Test complete business cases

Before going live, test five typical cases with your accountant and integration partner: a car sale, a service job, a parts sale, a deposit with final settlement and a corrective document. The test ends only when the received document has been matched with the accounting and operational record. It should also include an incorrect identifier, a rejection and a repeated transmission, which must not create a second receivable.

Pre-launch checklist

Each legal entity has an assigned scope of obligations and go-live date.
Receiving supplier invoices works, even if issuing your own invoices is not yet mandatory.
Deposits, final settlements and corrective documents are linked to the original transaction.
VAT treatments are carried over into the structured data.
Rejected documents have an owner and a correction procedure.
A repeated transmission does not create a second invoice.
Accounting can see the data sent and received and its processing history.
There is an operational procedure for system outages in line with local rules.

Pitfalls to watch out for

Receiving starts earlier than issuing

A Polish dealer must receive invoices via KSeF from 1 February 2026, even if its own issuing may only start from 1 April 2026. The situation is similar in Croatia: businesses outside the VAT system have been receiving e-invoices since 2026 but will start issuing them only in 2027. In Belgium, the obligation to receive also applies to a workshop that serves only private customers. A project focused solely on outgoing invoices therefore misses part of the obligation. As a result, receipt of invoices for parts and services comes to a halt.

A technically valid invoice can be wrong in substance

A structural check detects a missing mandatory field or an incorrect data format. However, it will not detect that the workshop is invoicing the wrong payer or that a supplier is invoicing parts it has not delivered. According to an expert commentary in the German magazine AUTOHAUS, technical validation does not replace a substantive check of the completeness and correctness of an invoice. Matching against the order and goods received note therefore remains the job of accounting and the parts department.

Delivering the invoice and reporting to the tax authorities are two steps

In Croatia, e-invoices are exchanged between access points. In addition, the systems of both the issuer and the recipient send a fiscalisation message to the tax authorities. Delivery to the business partner therefore does not cover the whole process.

The name of an integration does not say what it transmits

A connection to accounting may transmit only accounting entries. A structured invoice, its delivery and return statuses, however, require further interfaces. In the specification, therefore, list the data transmitted, the direction of transmission and how errors are handled.

Omnetic links invoicing with the car, the job and accounting

E-invoicing tests whether the invoice is created from the same data as the deal, the job and the parts stock. In a business where sales, servicing and accounting run in separate systems, data is re-keyed by hand. Each re-keying then carries the risk of a rejected document or an error in the VAT treatment. Omnetic replaces these separate systems and spreadsheets with a single cloud platform:

Omnetic DMS Core holds one shared record of the car, customer, jobs and money. All modules work with it directly, so data is not re-keyed between them. The customer, the car and the deposit have the same details in sales, the workshop and accounting.
Workshop manages the service job through to invoicing and splits line items between the customer, warranty and the insurer. Each payer therefore receives its own document with the correct line items.
Accounting links every document from sales, the workshop, the parts department and the bank to the car, branch and job. The invoice can be issued and sent directly from the deal. For a dealer that keeps its own accounting system, Omnetic passes entries through an integration agreed for the market concerned.

Existing systems, such as accounting software, can also be connected via the open platform with API and webhooks. Connection to the national format and delivery channel is agreed separately for each market. Omnetic can be introduced step by step: start with one module and add others later.

Arrange an Omnetic demo and see how a car sale, a service job and a deposit make their way through to the accounting document.

FAQ

Does mandatory e-invoicing also apply when selling a car to a private customer?

Of the countries in the overview, only in Italy, where the obligation also covers domestic supplies to consumers. In Belgium, the obligation applies to transactions between VAT-registered businesses. In Slovakia, it concerns invoices to domestic businesses and legal entities. A sale to a private individual is invoiced there as before.

Can an external accounting firm handle e-invoices?

Yes, it can receive and process documents and deal with rejected invoices. However, the division of work must specify who corrects the commercial data, who the accounting settings and who monitors technical errors. The firm needs to see the link to the job or deal, not just the final amount.

How should branches and separate companies within a dealer group be distinguished?

The obligation depends on the legal entity, so each company acts as a separate issuer and recipient. A branch is an operational attribute used to assign a deal, stock or job to the right location. The settings must cover both levels. The invoice then shows the correct company, and accounting also assigns it to the correct branch.

What happens to historical invoices when switching to Omnetic?

Master data and open items, such as unpaid receivables and payables, are migrated to Omnetic. Closed history remains available read-only in an archive. Older invoices therefore remain traceable.