What must an EU invoice include?
Written by Arnon Shimoni
✓ Expert
Last updated on:
An EU invoice has to include fifteen pieces of information set out in Article 226 of the VAT Directive, unless it qualifies as a simplified invoice, in which case five are enough. The Directive also says when you must issue one, how fast, in what currency, and how long you keep it. Each Member State fills in the gaps with its own thresholds and deadlines.
This page is the reference version of that rulebook for a software or platform business selling across Europe. It covers when an invoice is compulsory, what a full and a simplified invoice must contain, the extra wording for reverse charge and other special cases, deadlines, storage, and what changes under ViDA from 2030. Each topic has its own deeper page, linked throughout.
At a glance | EU invoicing rules |
|---|---|
Legal basis | Council Directive 2006/112/EC (the VAT Directive), Title XI Chapter 3, Articles 217 to 240, plus Articles 244 to 248 on storage |
Invoice compulsory for | Every B2B supply, intra-EU supplies of goods, distance sales outside the OSS, and advance payments. B2C is a national choice |
Whose rules apply | The Member State where the supply takes place, except reverse-charge supplies by a non-established supplier, where the supplier's own country applies |
Full invoice | 15 mandatory items (Article 226) |
Simplified invoice | 5 items, allowed up to €100 everywhere and up to €400 where the Member State has opted in (Articles 220a, 226b, 238) |
Deadline | 15th of the month after the chargeable event for intra-EU goods and reverse-charge services. National rules for everything else |
Currency | Any currency, but the VAT amount must also appear in the national currency of the Member State where VAT is due |
Format | Paper and electronic invoices are equal. Structured e-invoicing is mandatory in a growing list of countries and for all intra-EU B2B from 1 July 2030 |
When you must issue an invoice
Article 220 of the VAT Directive makes an invoice compulsory in four situations:
Any supply of goods or services to another taxable person or to a non-taxable legal entity. This is the B2B rule. It covers every sale to a business, and also sales to bodies that don't charge VAT themselves, like local authorities, associations and foundations.
Intra-EU supplies of goods that are exempt under Article 138, meaning goods shipped from one Member State to a VAT-registered customer in another.
Distance sales of goods to consumers that are taxable in another Member State, unless you report them through the One Stop Shop (OSS). If you use the OSS, you don't have to issue an invoice for those sales.
Advance payments. If a customer pays before the goods are delivered or the service is completed, you invoice the payment on account.
The one EU-wide exception is exempt financial and insurance services (Article 135(1)(a) to (g)) supplied to a customer in another Member State. No invoice is required. Member States can also waive the invoice for other exempt supplies carried out on their own territory.
For B2C sales of services, or domestic B2C sales of goods, EU law does not require an invoice at all. Most Member States do require some document though, either a receipt or a simplified invoice, and several require a full invoice above a value threshold. Check the national rule for each country you sell into.
The invoice does not have to be issued by you. Article 220 allows the customer to issue it (self-billing), or a third party to issue it in your name, which is what a billing platform does.
Whose rules apply to your invoice
This matters for anyone selling cross-border. Article 219a says the invoicing rules of the Member State where the supply takes place apply. For B2B services that's usually the customer's country, which would mean learning 27 sets of rules.
The exception saves you. Where you are not established in the customer's country and the customer accounts for the VAT under the reverse charge, the invoicing rules of your own Member State apply instead. A Dutch SaaS company selling to a German business issues the invoice under Dutch rules, with "reverse charge" on it. Only if the customer issues the invoice through self-billing do the customer's rules apply.
Supplies to customers outside the EU also follow your own Member State's rules.
What a full invoice must contain
Article 226 lists the information a full VAT invoice must carry. Member States cannot demand more than this for VAT purposes, and once an invoice has all of it the customer is entitled to deduct the VAT on it.
# | Mandatory item | Notes |
|---|---|---|
1 | Date of issue | The invoice date. Not the same as the supply date or the payment date |
2 | A sequential number, based on one or more series, that uniquely identifies the invoice | Gaps have to be explainable. See invoice numbering |
3 | Supplier's VAT identification number | The number under which you made the supply |
4 | Customer's VAT identification number | Required when the customer is liable for the VAT (reverse charge) or for intra-EU supplies of goods. Member States may require it on all domestic B2B invoices too |
5 | Full name and address of the supplier | Legal name, not just a brand |
6 | Full name and address of the customer | The billed legal entity |
7 | Quantity and nature of the goods, or extent and nature of the services | Line items with a description a tax inspector could follow |
8 | Date of the supply, or of the advance payment, where it differs from the issue date | For subscriptions and usage billing this is the service period |
9 | Taxable amount per rate or exemption, the unit price excluding VAT, and any discounts or rebates not already included in the unit price | Net amounts, broken down by VAT rate |
10 | The VAT rate applied | Per line or per rate group |
11 | The VAT amount payable | In the national currency of the Member State where VAT is due, even if the rest of the invoice is in dollars |
12 | "Cash accounting" | Only when the supplier uses a cash accounting scheme |
13 | Reference to the exemption, or the words "reverse charge", or margin scheme wording | Whichever applies. See the next section |
14 | "Self-billing" | Only when the customer issues the invoice |
15 | Tax representative's VAT number, name and address | Only when a fiscal representative is liable for the VAT |
Items 12 to 15 are conditional, so a plain domestic B2B invoice needs the first eleven. You can always add more than the law requires: purchase order numbers, payment terms, bank details, a due date and a customer reference are all standard, and most buyers' accounts payable teams will reject an invoice without a PO number even though no tax law asks for one.
Can you add more info to an invoice?
Yes.
You can add custom data and fields, as long as you include what's required, e.g., what a simplified invoice contains below.
What a simplified invoice must contain
Article 226b lets a simplified invoice carry only five items:
Date of issue
Identification of the supplier (name, address and VAT number)
Type of goods or services supplied
VAT amount payable, or the information needed to calculate it (the gross amount and the rate is enough)
On a credit note or other corrective document, a specific and unambiguous reference to the invoice being amended
No customer name, no customer VAT number, no unit prices, no per-rate breakdown. The customer can still deduct the VAT on it.
Every Member State must allow simplified invoices for amounts up to €100 including VAT (Article 220a). After consulting the VAT Committee a Member State can raise its threshold to €400 (Article 238), and Belgium, Spain, Italy and Austria have done so. Germany sits at €250, France at €150, the Netherlands and Ireland at €100. Simplified invoices are never allowed for intra-EU supplies of goods, distance sales, or supplies where a non-established supplier's customer accounts for the VAT. The country-by-country detail is on the simplified invoice page.
Extra wording in special cases
Article 226 requires specific statements in six situations. The wording is prescribed, and in most Member States the exact phrase in the national language or in English is accepted.
Situation | What the invoice must say |
|---|---|
Customer accounts for the VAT | The words "Reverse charge". Show the customer's VAT number, and omit the VAT rate and amount. See reverse charge invoice |
Exempt supply | A reference to the relevant article of the VAT Directive or the national law, or any other wording that makes clear the supply is exempt |
Customer issues the invoice | The words "Self-billing" |
Supplier uses cash accounting | The words "Cash accounting" |
Margin scheme applies | "Margin scheme — Travel agents", "Margin scheme — Second-hand goods", "Margin scheme — Works of art" or "Margin scheme — Collector's items and antiques" |
Intra-EU supply of a new means of transport | The details in Article 2(2)(b): for a vehicle, date of first entry into service and mileage |
Correcting an earlier invoice | A specific, unambiguous reference to the original invoice and the details being amended. See credit note |
When the invoice has to be issued
Article 222 sets one EU-wide deadline: for intra-EU supplies of goods, and for services where the customer accounts for the VAT under the reverse charge, the invoice must be issued no later than the 15th day of the month following the month in which the chargeable event occurred. For a cross-border SaaS subscription that means the invoice for March usage has to exist by 15 April.
For everything else, each Member State sets its own time limit. Germany gives six months. The Netherlands and Belgium use the same 15th-of-the-following-month rule for domestic supplies. France expects the invoice at the time of supply, with a tolerance for a periodic invoice at month end. Spain allows B2B invoices until the 16th of the following month. The full table is on the invoice issuance deadline page.
Article 223 allows a summary invoice covering several supplies to the same customer, as long as VAT on all of them became chargeable in the same calendar month. Member States can allow longer periods. This is the legal basis for one consolidated monthly invoice per customer, which is how most usage-based billing works.
Currency
Article 230 lets you invoice in any currency. The only constraint is that the VAT amount must be expressed in the national currency of the Member State where the VAT is due, converted at the rate published by the European Central Bank or the national central bank for the date the tax becomes chargeable. A Swedish company billing a Swedish customer in US dollars therefore shows the VAT in SEK as well. For reverse-charge invoices there is no VAT amount, so the rule does not bite.
When generating an invoice for the US, you should also include wire transfer information, like this:
Paper, PDF and structured e-invoices
Under Article 232 an electronic invoice is equivalent to a paper one and the recipient has to accept receiving it electronically. A PDF attached to an email is an electronic invoice in this sense. It is not a structured e-invoice.
A structured e-invoice is a machine-readable file, in the EU usually following the EN 16931 standard (UBL or CII syntax), exchanged through a network like Peppol or a national platform. Public bodies across the EU have been required to accept structured e-invoices since 2019 under Directive 2014/55/EU. Italy, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Belgium already mandate them for domestic B2B, Germany requires businesses to be able to receive them since 2025 and to issue them from 2027, France phases in from September 2026, and more countries follow each year. The e-invoicing page tracks the mandate landscape.
Whatever the format, Articles 233 and 246 require you to guarantee the authenticity of origin, integrity of content and legibility of every invoice from issue until the end of the storage period. Business controls that create a reliable audit trail between the invoice and the supply are enough; you don't need digital signatures.
Storing invoices
Articles 244 to 248 require every taxable person to store copies of the invoices they issue and receive. You can store them on paper or electronically, and in another Member State, as long as the tax authority of your own country can access them online without delay. The storage period is set nationally. Belgium requires 10 years, Germany 8 years for invoices, the Netherlands 7 years, and France 10 years for commercial records with a 6-year tax minimum. Keep the longest period that applies to you.
What changes under ViDA
The VAT in the Digital Age package (Council Directive (EU) 2025/516) was adopted on 11 March 2025 and entered into force on 14 April 2025. It changes the invoicing chapter in stages:
Since April 2025: Member States can mandate domestic structured e-invoicing without asking the EU for a derogation, and when they do, the recipient's acceptance is no longer required.
From 1 July 2030: structured e-invoices following EN 16931 become the default invoice for intra-EU B2B supplies. They must be issued within 10 days of the chargeable event, replacing the 15th-of-the-following-month rule for those supplies. Each invoice is reported in near real time to the tax authority through digital reporting requirements, which replace the EC Sales List. E-invoices also gain two new mandatory fields: the supplier's bank account or payment details, and, on corrective invoices, the sequential number of the original.
From 1 July 2030: summary invoices for intra-EU supplies are restricted to a single calendar month and are not allowed for goods on the fraud-prone list.
By 2035: national e-invoicing systems that existed before 2024 must converge on the EU standard.
The practical consequence for a billing system is that the invoice is no longer a document you produce at the end of a process. It becomes a data record that has to be correct, complete and transmitted within days, with no room for the manual clean-up many finance teams still do before sending.
Where Solvimon fits
Every rule on this page is something Solvimon handles in the invoice it generates. Tax is calculated from the billing entity's country and the customer's country, VAT numbers are validated against VIES, and reverse-charge, exemption and intra-EU wording is added as tax notes automatically. Each billing entity keeps its own unbroken invoice number sequence, the invoice date is set by rule rather than by whoever presses send, finalised invoices are immutable and corrected only through linked credit notes, and structured e-invoices go out through country mandates or the Avalara integration. If you're adding countries or entities faster than your invoicing can keep up, talk to one of our experts.
FAQ
Do I have to issue an invoice to consumers in the EU?
Not under EU law, except for distance sales of goods outside the OSS and new means of transport. Most Member States require at least a receipt or simplified invoice for B2C sales, and some require a full invoice above a threshold or on request.
Can I put the invoice in English?
Yes. The Directive doesn't prescribe a language. A Member State can require a translation of specific invoices for control purposes, and a few require that the mandatory statements also appear in the national language. Most accept the English phrase "Reverse charge".
Does a PDF count as an e-invoice?
Under Article 232, yes, it is an electronic invoice and legally equal to paper. It does not count as a structured e-invoice for the mandates in Italy, Belgium, Germany, France or the 2030 intra-EU rule, which require machine-readable XML.
What happens if an invoice is missing a mandatory item?
Two things. Your customer's right to deduct the VAT can be challenged, so they will send it back. And you can be fined under national rules, with penalties per invoice in several countries. Fix it by issuing a credit note and a corrected invoice, not by editing the original.
Can I invoice in dollars to an EU customer?
Yes. If VAT is charged, the VAT amount must also be shown in the national currency of the country where the VAT is due. On a reverse-charge invoice there is no VAT amount, so the invoice can be entirely in USD.
Do I need a separate invoice for every subscription or usage charge?
No. Article 223 allows one summary invoice for all supplies to a customer in the same calendar month, and most Member States allow that. From 2030 the one-month limit becomes fixed for intra-EU supplies.
This page was checked against the VAT Directive, the European Commission's invoicing guidance and Council Directive (EU) 2025/516 in October 2026. It is a general explanation and doesn't replace advice from your tax adviser.
Related
Simplified invoice. The five-field invoice, national thresholds, and when it is not allowed.
Reverse charge invoice. Invoicing cross-border B2B services without charging VAT.
Credit note. How to correct an issued invoice.
Invoice numbering. Sequential, unique, and gap-free.
Invoice issuance deadline. EU and national time limits.
Invoice. The document itself and the invoice-to-cash process.
E-invoicing. Structured invoices and the mandate map.
Invoice compliance. Keeping every invoice legally valid at scale.
Automated invoicing. Generating compliant invoices from subscription and usage data.
Self-billing. When the customer issues the invoice.
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