Billing software in Europe: Estonia

Estonia is one of the leaders in exchanging with electronic invoices. More than 30% of all invoice volume is sent electronically. Electronic invoices usually are sent via e-mail, into internet bank or into self-service portals of invoice sender. Billing software is your indispensable assistant in exchanging with electronic invoices. Usually large enterprises start using billing software to exchange invoices with other companies. That’s why electronic invoices appear in business-to-business (B2B) sector first. Estonia is the example of the opposite trend. First electronic invoices were sent exactly in business-to-consumer (B2C) sector. Exchanging with electronic invoices in Estonia started in 2000. Estonia is the example of great solution in eInvoicing. They created web portal arved.ee, which is aimed to receiving invoices electronically. Everyone can join this portal and to choose option to receive all their invoices to an e-mail or into internet bank. This web portal is non-profit. However, this stimulates sending invoices electronically and using billing software. Also if a person is registered on this portal, invoice issuer can send the invoice to the receiver without any interim agreement. Although the legislation is very loyal about invoicing in Estonia, in business-to-business (B2B) sector, electronic invoices are less developed. A lot of paper invoices are still being sent. But also billing software is being introduced into companies more and more. The main invoice standard in Estonia is “Estonian E-invoice XML”. It’s not very popular, that’s why international standards of e-invoice are also used. Billing software allows you to create and send your invoices in different formats. So you always can meet your business partner’s requirements.

27 Apr 2012