B2B e-invoicing in Finland 2026: is it mandatory yet?

Well. As of 15 September 2026, no Finnish law requires every domestic business-to-business invoice to move as a structured e-invoice. Act 241/2019 does something different: it gives the buyer a right to demand one. Since 1 April 2020, both a public-sector contracting authority and a company whose financial-year turnover exceeds €10,000 can require the seller to send an e-invoice that meets the European standard, and once the buyer asks, a PDF is no longer good enough. The public sector is stricter: since 1 April 2021 the Finnish state accepts only e-invoices that comply with the European standard. The next real milestone comes from the EU's ViDA package. Cross-border B2B e-invoicing and transaction-level VAT reporting become mandatory from 1 July 2030.

B2G and B2B in Finland are two different regimes

Most of the confusion comes from one source: for years the Finnish public sector has repeated the same line, "e-invoices only, please". That's accurate, but it describes B2G, meaning invoicing a public-sector buyer.

What Act 241/2019 actually requires

Act 241/2019 puts the duty on the buying authority to receive and process compliant e-invoices. A contracting authority (hankintayksikko, a public buyer that falls under procurement rules) has had this obligation since 1 April 2019 if it's a state agency or central purchasing body, and since 1 April 2020 for everyone else. Look closely at what the obligation actually is. It's a receiving duty on the public buyer, not a sending duty on every Finnish company.

The state's own practice goes further than the law requires. The State Treasury says outright that an invoice attached to an email won't be accepted, because that isn't an e-invoice, and that 98% of invoices sent to the state arrive electronically. The public sector accounts for approximately 7 percent of all Finnish B2B invoicing, yet almost every company invoices a public buyer sooner or later. That's how the practice spreads. It's a market convention, not a general statutory obligation.

Who does the €10,000 threshold actually apply to?

This is the number people get wrong most often. In Act 241/2019, €10,000 defines who counts as a business (elinkeinonharjoittä) for the purposes of that Act. It refers to financial-year turnover.

It is not:

• the amount on a single invoice: a €12,000 invoice does not by itself trigger any e-invoice duty;
• a number of invoices: how many invoices you send per month is irrelevant;
• a general B2B sales threshold: it does not turn all business-to-business electronic invoicing.

If the buyer's turnover stays below the threshold, they fall outside the scope of section 4. They can still ask you nicely for an e-invoice, but they have no statutory right to point to.

And now the honest answer to the question Baltic sellers care about most. Whether Finnish law imposes a direct obligation on an Estonian, Latvian or Lithuanian seller is not stated unambiguously in these sources, and I'm not going to invent it here. In practice the argument rarely gets that far. If your Finnish client requires an online payment and you send a PDF, the invoice never reaches their system and the payment simply doesn't move. And the requirement is usually written into the contract or the purchasing terms anyway.

Is a PDF sent by email a webcast?

Well. The State Treasury's definition is narrow and unambiguous: an e-invoice is a machine-readable invoice delivered straight into accounting software or online banking, and a PDF or image file attached to an email is not an e-invoice. The Act follows the same logic. What a buyer can demand is a structured invoice that allows automatic processing and conforms to the European standard.

What the European standard means

The European standard means EN 16931, a single description of which data fields an invoice must carry and what each of them means. In Finland it is published as SFS-EN 16931-1:2017 + A1:2019 and can be downloaded free from the SFS online store. The reference to the standard was published at EU level by Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2017/1870, which is why the same standard sits underneath every member state's rules.

The formats common in Finland, Finvoice 3.0 and TEAPPSXML 3.0, are both capable of producing a standard-compliant invoice, but compliance does not appear automatically just because the format is correct. The data content has to be in order too. For cross-border sending, an international format is used, typically UBL, carried over the Peppol network.

Your Finnish client asks for a net shot: what exactly do you ask for?

The State Treasury's guidance is simple. The buyer should first confirm that its invoice-receiving service supports the European standard, and then give the supplier its e-invoice address and operator identifier. Your side of that conversation looks like this.

• Ask for two things: the e-invoice address, meaning the client's e-invoice address, and their operator identifier. Without both, there is nowhere to send.
• Check your own end: ask your software provider or e-invoice operator whether the version you're on sends invoices that comply with the European standard. If it doesn't, you need the update.
• Choose a channel: invoices to Finnish state agencies can travel through the Peppol network or via Posti Messaging. If neither fits, you can create the e-invoice free of charge in the Handi or Basware supplier portal.
• Get the details right: the State Treasury lists as mandatory the VAT numbers of both seller and buyer (for Finland, FI + the Y-identifier business ID without the hyphen), plus names and addresses. An invoice to the state must carry both the Y-identifier and the VAT number. If the buyer has given you an order or contract number, it belongs on the invoice.
• Don't put several orders on one invoice: Peppol's guidance allows an invoice to refer to one order only, at most one purchase order reference (BT-13) per invoice. If the client wants a consolidated invoice, agree the data content with them separately.

One practical side effect is worth knowing. A standard-compliant invoice is validated against shared rules, so an invoice with missing content gets bounced by the operator already. Far better to get the rejection notice immediately than to discover two weeks later that the invoice disappeared somewhere.

1 July 2030 and 1 January 2035: what ViDA changes

ViDA, the EU's "VAT in the Digital Age" package, was adopted on 11 March 2025 and published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 25 March 2025 as Directive (EU) 2025/516.

The dates before 2030

According to the Commission's timetable, member states already gained the right to impose mandatory e-invoicing under certain conditions when the package entered into force on 14 April 2025. The OSS and IOSS clarifications apply from 1 January 2027, and the single VAT registration part, together with the platform rules, from 1 July 2028.

The date that concerns you is 1 July 2030. From that day, EU cross-border business-to-business transactions require both e-invoices conforming to the European standard and transaction-level reporting. As the Tax Administration explains, the seller must pass the invoice data to the tax authority within 10 days of the sale or of receiving an advance payment, and the buyer in principle within 5 days of receiving the invoice, although a member state may leave purchase invoices out of mandatory reporting. At the same time, recapitulative VAT statements disappear. A member state may introduce domestic transaction-level reporting if it wants to, but that too has to be built on e-invoices, and by 1 January 2035 at the latest national systems must align with the EU model.

What is not changing in 2026

Two things not to over-read right now — Finland has no general domestic B2B e-invoice mandate, and ViDA itself does not force Finland to build a domestic transaction-level reporting system. There is no date in these sources for when Finland might introduce a domestic mandate. Nothing has been fixed in law.

The pressure comes from elsewhere. In 2025, 353.2 million invoices moved through operators in Finland, the number of Peppol messages grew 61 percent to 778,884 transactions, and the e-invoice address directory now holds close to 370,000 business IDs, 100,000 more than in 2021. The same review notes that Germany, France and Belgium are bringing in mandatory e-invoicing during 2026–2027.

The practical conclusion is dull and useful. With a Finnish client, there is no point waiting for a change in the law. Ask for their e-invoice address and operator identifier on the very next invoice, and confirm that your own end can send an invoice that meets the European standard. Get that in place, and the 2030 cross-border obligation becomes a new reporting rule for you rather than a new system.

Also available in: in Estonian · Latvian · Lithuanian

Last reviewed: September 15, 2026

FAQ

Will there be a general B2B e-invoicing obligation in Finland in 2026?

No, in 2026, no Finnish law will require all domestic B2B invoices to be sent as a structured e-invoice. However, Act 241/2019 gives a buyer with a turnover exceeding 10,000 euros per financial year the legal right to request an e-invoice from the seller that complies with the European standard.

Is a PDF file sent by email considered a verkkolasku in Finland?

No, according to the definition of the Finnish Treasury and the law, a PDF or image file sent as an email attachment is not an e-invoice. An e-invoice must be a machine-readable structured XML file (for example Finvoice 3.0 or Peppol BIS) that complies with the European standard EN 16931.

When will cross-border e-invoicing between Finland and other EU countries become mandatory?

According to the EU ViDA (VAT in the Digital Age) Directive, mandatory cross-border B2B e-invoicing and transaction-based reporting will come into effect on 1 July 2030. From this date, the current VAT summary reports will also disappear.