E-bill to the federal government

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The e-bill to the federal government is a data transfer procedure that is mandatory in Austria for the transmission of bills to the federal administration. The purpose of the procedure is to reduce costs in the federal accounting system. As of January 1, 2014, the approximately 60,000 federal suppliers and contractual partners have to submit their invoices in a structured form electronically in a specific format. The "E-bill to the federal government" project regulates the permitted data formats ( ebInterface and the PEPPOL format), the options for electronic transmission and the responses from the authorities. Paper invoices are no longer accepted.

Legal basis

The § 2 para. 2 of the ICT Consolidation Act prescribes the mandatory delivery of e-invoices for goods and services to the federal government from January 1, 2014. An electronic invoice is an invoice that is issued, sent, received and processed in an electronic format and that contains at least the invoice features specified in Section 11 (1) UStG 1994.

According to Section 5 (3) of the ICT Consolidation Act, foreign contractual partners are only obliged to issue and transmit e-bills in accordance with the technical possibilities. Paper invoices are therefore still accepted. In order to allow foreign contract partners access, a connection to PEPPOL was created, via which e-invoices in the PEPPOL UBL 2.0 format can be submitted.

A foreign contractual partner with a permanent establishment in Austria is considered an Austrian contractual partner and is therefore subject to the e-billing obligation.

Technical requirements

ebInterface is the Austrian XML standard for legally compliant electronic invoices. It is intended not only to enable Austrian companies to generate fully automated, legally compliant electronic invoices, but also to enable fully automated invoices to be received. EbInterface was developed by a working group of the AustriaPro association. The ebInterface version 4.0 has been in effect since November 5th, 2011.

PEPPOL (Pan-European Public Procurement OnLine) is an internationally developed solution with the aim of standardizing cross-border electronically supported public procurement processes (Public eProcurement) within the European Union.

The Austrian federal administration has set up access for e-bills to the federal government, which is able to accept e-bills sent via the PEPPOL transport infrastructure and forward them for processing. Participation in the PEPPOL network is chargeable.

Bringing options

Manually by posting via the web form

Companies that send very few bills to the federal government and have no software that generates ebInterface data can also enter and submit their bills using a web form. The following pages offer this option:

  • Corporate Service Portal (USP). Registration in the USP is a prerequisite for using the web form. This can be done either with the citizen card or using the FinanzOnline company ID.
  • Postserver.at. A prerequisite is the creation of a user account with a username / password.

Manually via upload

Companies that already have software that generates valid documents in accordance with ebInterface can submit their invoices to the company service portal (USP) using an XML upload. A complete list of manufacturers who support ebInterface can be found on the ebInterface website.

Automatically via web service interface

The web service is particularly suitable for those companies that issue a lot of invoices. It offers the highest level of automation, as invoices can be sent to the federal government directly from the company's ERP software. The prerequisite for this is an interface that is either supplied turnkey by the ERP manufacturer using a software update or that has to be programmed.

A maximum of 200 attachments with a maximum of 15 MB in total can also be sent to the invoice. Only PNG , XLS , XLSX , XML and PDF are accepted as formats for attachments .

Every time an invoice is received, the system checks whether it meets certain criteria. Some of these criteria (e.g. file format, mandatory fields) are checked immediately upon upload. In the event of an error, there is direct feedback. If the upload is successful, further conditions will be checked and, if successful, a proof of invoice in PDF format will be sent by email. In the event of an error, the causes are informed by email. In this case, the invoice is deemed not to have been accepted.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.erb.gv.at/index.jsp?p=info_erb
  2. ↑ USP
  3. ↑ http://www.postserver.at/
  4. ↑ https://www.wko.at/Content.Node/AUSTRIAPRO/ebInterface_Partner.html