Dutch Government eyes mandatory B2G e-invoicing in 2016

In anticipation of converting the EU Directive into national legislation, B2G e-invoicing will be mandated as of –late- 2016. The Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs decided that new contracts with suppliers will contain the mandated B2G e-invoicing principle. The announcement was made at the Dutch Invoice Conference 2016.

In addition, until the new EU e-invoice syntaxes are available, the Dutch government allows for two UBL syntaxes. The first one is UBL-OHNL. UBL-OHNL is a UBL dialect specifically developed for Dutch public authorities. The other one is UBL-SI (SimplerInvoicing). Another syntax that is currently allowed is XML-SETU.

The Dutch central public authorities can only receive and process UBL-OHNL e-invoices. Other public authorities are allowed to receive e-invoices in UBL-SI. Somewhere in 2018-2020 all public authorities should be ready to –also- receive the new EU-UBL invoice (as well as other EU syntaxes).

As it concerns the B2G e-invoicing in Netherlands a few aspects must be mentioned such as the fact that there is a distinction between the central public authorities and the other (local) authorities.

E-invoices to the central governments and its central public authorities can be provided through Simplerinvoicing, a network of 9 e-billing service providers, based on PEPPOL. This network is connected with Digipoort. E-invoices that are not yet in UBL-OHNL are processed in the network before they are forwarded to Digipoort.

Also, E-invoices can be provided directly through the governmental e-invoice hub, the above mentioned Digipoort. Through Digipoort you are connected to the central IT infrastructure of the (State) Government where message traffic is handled. A direct connection with Digipoort is mainly for companies that send a lot of B2G invoices.

Another channel that provides e-invoices is the webform www.papierloosfactureren.nl for small companies that only occasionally send B2G e-invoices.

Related to eInvoices destined to other that central public authorities and other public contracting authorities must be mentioned that another regime is applicable. For example, if they want to, they are allowed to use the same channel as the Dutch central goverments (I.e. Digipoort, SimplerInvoicing, webform). However, they are also allowed to receive UBL-SI/UBL-OHNL/SET U invoices by e-mail.

What`s more, in a recent project, called ‘UBL Chain Test’, over 60 of the biggest SME providers were facilitated to be able to send UBL e-invoices (to each other and to public authorities). These 60 providers account for an 80% market share in the SME, making the UBL Chain Test project a huge enabler for lowel contrating authorities within the Dutch B2G e-invoicing mandate.