What is a net shot? Finnish e-invoice rules 2026

An e-invoice is the Finnish word for a machine-readable e-invoice: an invoice that is issued, transmitted and received in a structured electronic form, so that software can process it automatically. That is exactly how it is defined in Finland's act on electronic invoicing by contracting authorities and economic operators (241/2019), which came into force on 1 April 2019 and implemented the EU invoicing directive 2014/55/EU. The invoice also has to follow the European standard EN 16931. The practical difference is simple: a PDF invoice attached to an email is not an online invoice, because somebody still has to type its data into a system by hand. A network drop moves through an operator network from one invoicing program into another and lands among the recipient's purchase invoices with no manual work at all.

A PDF invoice, an e-invoice and a web invoice are three different things

These three words are the ones that get mixed up most often in conversations with Finnish customers.

A PDF invoice is a picture of an invoice. A person reads it and types the numbers in. Formally it is an electronic document, but it is not in structured form, and that is why it does not fit the e-invoice definition given in act 241/2019.

In everyday Finnish usage, an e-mail means an invoice sent to a private person, a consumer, arriving in their online bank. A online invoice is the one you send to another company or to the public sector.

A net shot is a machine-readable to say, a data file in which each field sits in its own place: seller, buyer, invoice number, due date, VAT, total. That is precisely why the buyer's program can post it into the accounts on its own.

A concrete example. You send a Finnish customer an invoice for €1,200. As a PDF it lands in somebody's mailbox and waits until that person gets round to entering it. As a net shot it reaches their purchase invoice queue in a few minutes, without anyone typing a thing.

Is a net shot mandatory in Finland?

The answer is more precise than a plain yes or no.

There is no general rule saying that every invoice between two Finnish companies must always travel as an online payment. Act 241/2019 does two things. First, it obliges the public sector to receive such invoices: central government bodies and joint procurement units from 1 April 2019, the remaining contracting authorities from 1 April 2020. Second, it gives you the right, from 1 April 2020, to demand from another contracting authority or economic operator an invoice in exactly the e-invoice form defined in that act.

In other words: your Finnish customer can require a web shot. Once they do, a PDF no longer does the job.

The act treats as an economic operator (elinkeinonharjoittä) any business or professional activity with a turnover of more than €10,000 in the financial year. That line decides who this right to demand applies to. It is not some general threshold above which net shots become compulsory.

With the public sector the picture is clear. The Finnish state accepts only online shots that comply with the European standard, and the invoice has to carry the mandatory data fields from both the tax administration's invoicing requirements and the public administration guideline. If one mandatory field is empty, the invoice is not compliant.

How to send your first e-mail to a Finnish customer

Four steps, no more.

• Ask the customer for the address: you need their verkollasku address and their operator, or intermediary, ID. The two always go together.
• Sign up with an operator: an e-invoice operator is a service provider that lets you send and receive invoices electronically. Without an operator, the invoice never reaches the network.
• Check the invoice fields: invoice number, date, reference number, due date, the VAT breakdown, the IBAN and both parties' identifiers.
• Send it and read the confirmation: your operator will show you whether the invoice was delivered or got stuck.

What does an OVT code mean?

OVT comes from Organizations External Tiedonsiirto, data transfer between organizations, and the code is used to route the invoice to the right recipient. It starts with the Finnish Tax Administration's code 0037, then comes the business ID (y-identifier) without the hyphen, 8 characters in all, and after that, if you want, a suffix of up to 5 characters, so that the total length stays between 12 and 17 characters: 003723327487, for example.

The operator ID is part of the same address and shows which operator handles that customer's invoice traffic. Tieke keeps an up-to-date list of the intermediary IDs of operators and banks, and recipients' OVT codes can be looked up in the public online payment address registry.

Finvoice, EN 16931 and Peppol: which one do you pick?

Two things are worth keeping apart here. EN 16931 sets the information content, the data content, meaning which details the invoice has to contain. The standard SFS-EN 16931-1:2017 is available free of charge from the SFS site. Finvoice 3.0 and TEAPPSXML 3.0 are the invoice descriptions in use in Finland, and their newest versions comply with that European standard. Finvoice is an XML-based message.

In practice you do not choose the format. Your operator or your invoicing software does. Your job is simply to know that the invoice meets the European standard.

With international customers, ask about Peppol. Peppol is the pan-European e-invoicing network, and by joining it you can receive invoices from every company able to send through that network. If the customer sits outside Finland, ask your operator directly whether invoices from that country are accepted.

What will change by 2030?

The EU's ViDA package (VAT in the Digital Age) was adopted on 11 March 2025 and entered into force on 14 April 2025; the legal acts were published in the EU Official Journal on 25 March 2025, and the main act is Council Directive (EU) 2025/516. From entry into force, member states may make e-invoicing mandatory under certain conditions.

Two dates are worth remembering. Digital reporting requirements based on e-invoices start to apply to cross-border EU B2B transactions on 1 July 2030. And 1 January 2035 is the deadline by which member states that run their own domestic real-time, transaction-level reporting must bring it into line with the EU model.

This is often read incorrectly, though. 1 July 2030 does not automatically make domestic Finnish B2B online sales compulsory, because it concerns cross-border transactions. Neither the content nor the start date of a Finnish domestic obligation has been fixed in law. The topic is still being prepared, and the question of whether it covers small companies, and with what transition periods, is still under consideration.

Which is why it makes sense to get your address and your operator sorted before anyone demands it. Start with something easy: ask your three biggest Finnish customers for their online address and intermediary ID. If they send them over, it means they are ready to receive your invoices in machine-readable form — and the manual work on your next invoice drops immediately.

Also available in: in Estonian

Last reviewed: September 14, 2026

FAQ

What is the difference between a PDF invoice and an online invoice?

A PDF invoice is a digital document image that a person must manually read and print for accounting purposes. A Verkkolasku is a machine-readable XML data file that complies with the European standard EN 16931 and moves automatically between billing software via the operator's network. For the purposes of Finnish Act 241/2019, a regular PDF is not classified as an e-invoice.

Is online payment mandatory between companies in Finland?

There is no general automatic obligation for all companies, but Law 241/2019 gives the buyer the legal right to request an e-invoice. If the transaction partner's annual turnover exceeds 10,000 euros or it is a public sector and requires a standard e-invoice, the seller may no longer limit himself to a PDF.

What is an OVT token and how is it formed?

The OVT code represents data transfer between organizations and acts as an e-payment address. The code begins with the Finnish tax authority prefix 0037, followed by the company's 8-digit y-code without a hyphen and, if necessary, up to a five-digit department specification. The total length of the code ranges from 12 to 17 characters.