Electronic invoice in Austria

Central receiving portal with UBL 2.1 and ebInterface formats – B2G mandatory

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Overview

Austria is one of the oldest e-invoicing jurisdictions in Europe and one of the least demanding. Suppliers to the federal administration have had to invoice in structured electronic form since 1 January 2014 — a national mandate that predates the European B2G Directive by five years. Everything outside that perimeter is voluntary.

There is no domestic B2B mandate, no B2C mandate, no clearance and no real-time VAT reporting. The federal portal validates and routes invoices; it does not authorise them for tax purposes. For a certified Peppol Access Point the whole country reduces to three technical questions: the right format, the right endpoint, and the order reference that decides which ministry actually receives the document.

9915:b

one Peppol endpoint for the entire federal administration

5 formats

four ebInterface versions plus UBL 2.1 — but only UBL travels over Peppol

7 years

the general retention period — up to 22 where real estate is involved

Timeline

Austria's own milestones are behind it. The dates still ahead are European rather than Austrian.

Already in force

1 January 2014

Structured e-invoicing becomes mandatory for federal suppliers

Under the ICT Consolidation Act (IKT-Konsolidierungsgesetz, IKTKonG), contractual partners of federal bodies must submit invoices exclusively as structured e-invoices. Paper and PDF-by-email stop counting as invoices in this channel.

18 April 2019

The EU reception obligation takes effect

Directive 2014/55/EU obliges contracting authorities to receive and process e-invoices conforming to EN 16931. In Austria this added a European layer to a national mandate that had already been running for five years.

14 April 2025

ViDA enters into force

Directive (EU) 2025/516, adopted on 11 March 2025, removes the requirement for member states to obtain a derogation before mandating domestic B2B e-invoicing — and removes the recipient's right to refuse a structured invoice. Austria has not used the new freedom.

Still ahead

1 July 2030

ViDA digital reporting for intra-EU B2B

Structured e-invoicing and digital reporting become mandatory for cross-border B2B transactions inside the EU and for transactions under mandatory reverse charge. See ViDA and 2030.

1 January 2035

Alignment of domestic reporting systems

Member states operating domestic transaction reporting must align it with the EU model. Austria has no such system, so unless one is introduced this deadline does not currently bite.

There is no announced Austrian B2B mandate — no bill, no published date, no consultation outcome. Commentary that places an Austrian domestic mandate in 2028 or 2030 is inference from the European timetable, not Austrian law. Treat any such date as planning weather, not a deadline.

Who is in scope

The dividing line in Austria is not company size or turnover. It is who the buyer is.

Federal bodiesSuppliers must send a structured e-invoice. No turnover threshold, no exemption for small suppliers, no opt-out by agreement

Länder, cities, municipalitiesNo general obligation on the supplier. These bodies may use the federal service voluntarily, and an individual contract or tender may still require an e-invoice

Domestic B2BVoluntary. Electronic invoicing is permitted, not required

Cross-border B2BNo Austrian mandate. The EU regime applies from 2030

B2CNo mandate. Ordinary invoicing and receipt rules apply

Because the federal mandate covers only part of the public sector, the European Commission classifies Austria's B2G mandate as partial. That single word carries a real operational consequence: a supplier working for both a ministry and a provincial authority may be obliged in one relationship and free in the other, for identical goods.

B2G — the federal mandate

This is the one hard obligation Austria has, and it is stricter than most people expect from a country with no B2B mandate. §5 IKTKonG provides that an invoice is properly submitted only once it has passed formal validation without error and been accepted by the federal body concerned. Sending is not submitting.

What countsA structured e-invoice in ebInterface or UBL 2.1, delivered through the federal service or through Peppol

What does notPaper. A PDF attached to an email. A scan. These are explicitly not e-invoices for the purposes of the federal mandate

Who validatesThe federal service, operated by the Federal Computing Centre (Bundesrechenzentrum, BRZ), performs formal checks and routes the document onward

When it is doneOn acceptance by the receiving federal body — not on transmission

The practical reading: build for the rejection path. An invoice that fails validation has not been submitted at all, which means payment terms have not started running. In a clearance country you would call this a rejection. Here it is simply a non-event — and it is silent unless your system watches for the response.

B2B and B2C

Domestic B2B e-invoicing in Austria is voluntary and governed by ordinary VAT law. An electronic invoice is valid where the recipient accepts it and where authenticity of origin, integrity of content and legibility are ensured from issue until the end of the retention period.

Austrian rules accept several ways of ensuring those three properties: a reliable internal control process producing an audit trail between invoice and supply, a qualified electronic signature or seal, or EDI with an appropriate agreement. Transmission through Peppol or the federal service satisfies them in the scenarios where it applies. None of these is privileged over the others — the choice is the taxpayer's.

B2C is the same picture without the consent debate: no structured format is required, and no mandate is announced.

One nuance worth knowing since ViDA entered into force: at EU level the recipient's consent is no longer required for a structured e-invoice complying with the European standard. Austria has not built a domestic mandate on top of that freedom — but the direction of travel is that consent becomes the exception rather than the gate.

The model

Austria runs a government reception and validation gateway for B2G, alongside Peppol four-corner interoperability, on top of a post-audit VAT regime. It is important not to confuse the first of those with tax clearance.

A validation gateway

The federal service checks structure and formal correctness before forwarding the invoice to the buying authority. The checks are about admissibility of the document, not about the tax treatment of the transaction.

Not tax clearance

The tax administration does not approve invoices before they are exchanged, does not issue an authorisation code and does not receive a real-time copy of B2B or B2C transactions.

What Austria does not have

Centralised clearance in the manner of the Italian SdI

A five-corner model with the tax authority as a fifth participant

Real-time VAT reporting or a transaction-level reporting obligation

A national accreditation regime for service providers on top of Peppol

The competent authority for e-invoicing policy is the Federal Ministry of Finance (Bundesministerium für Finanzen, BMF). Any future domestic mandate would originate there.

Formats and PDF

Austria maintains a national format alongside the European one, which is the single most common source of confusion for foreign providers. ebInterface is the Austrian XML invoice standard, developed by Austrian Standards and widely used domestically. UBL 2.1 is the European route.

ebInterfaceVersions 4.3, 5.0, 6.0 and 6.1 are accepted. Versions 4.0–4.2 were withdrawn in April 2022; 3.0 and 3.02 in January 2016

UBLUBL 2.1, in practice the Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 subset — accepted over Peppol, and also by manual upload and web service

Over PeppolUBL only. ebInterface cannot be sent through the Peppol network

InternallyEverything received is converted to AustroFIX (Austrian Financial Invoice eXchange), the canonical intermediate format of the federal service

European standardEN 16931 defines the semantic model and its two syntaxes, UBL 2.1 and UN/CEFACT CII D16B

Where the PDF sits

For the federal mandate, a PDF is not an e-invoice. This is stated directly and without qualification: a paper invoice or a PDF sent by email does not satisfy §5 IKTKonG and is not accepted by federal bodies. A PDF may accompany a structured invoice as a visualisation; it cannot replace it.

Outside the federal channel the position reverses. For ordinary B2B and B2C an invoice may be sent by email, as an attachment, via web download, as a PDF or text file, or as a scan or fax — provided the recipient accepts it and authenticity, integrity and legibility are ensured. That flexibility is real today, and it is exactly what ViDA will withdraw for intra-EU B2B in 2030.

Submission channels

Two routes reach the federal administration, and they have different registration consequences.

USP / e-Rechnung.gv.at

The national channel, reached through the Business Service Portal (Unternehmensserviceportal, USP). Offers a web form, file upload and a web service interface.

Accepts ebInterface and UBL. Requires the submitter to have USP access.

Peppol

The interoperable route. The Austrian administration operates a Peppol Access Point for reception; the supplier uses a service provider or runs its own Access Point.

Accepts UBL only. No USP registration needed for the sender.

A registration detail that saves arguments

Where the portal route is used, it is the submitter who must be registered in USP — not necessarily the party issuing the invoice. Submission through a third party such as a service provider or a tax adviser is expressly allowed. An Austrian client who has never touched USP can therefore still be served entirely through a provider.

Identifiers and routing

Austria does something unusual in Peppol: the whole federal administration sits behind a single participant identifier.

The federal receiver endpoint:

iso6523-actorid-upis::9915:b

The actual recipient is not resolved by a per-ministry endpoint. It is resolved from the order reference (Auftragsreferenz) carried inside the document. Get the order reference wrong and the invoice is undeliverable even though the address was perfect — this is the single most frequent cause of failed Austrian B2G submissions, and it is invisible at the transport layer.

Austrian electronic address schemes

9914Austrian VAT identification number (Umsatzsteuer-Identifikationsnummer) — the usual choice for voluntary B2B

9915Austrian administrative or organisational identifier — the scheme behind the federal endpoint

9919Identifier from the company register (Unternehmensregister)

There is no mandatory national addressing regime for B2B, for the simple reason that there is no B2B mandate to enforce one. Parties agree on the scheme they use.

Peppol in Austria

Peppol matters in Austria but is not the default. For federal B2G the primary national channel remains USP / e-Rechnung.gv.at; Peppol is the alternative, and it is the more comfortable one for foreign suppliers, service providers and anyone automating at volume.

The Austrian administration operates a Peppol Access Point for reception. On the sending side a supplier may either engage a service provider or become an Access Point itself. Transport is AS4, and the document profile is Peppol BIS Billing 3.0.

No separate national Peppol Authority

No dedicated Austrian Peppol Authority was identified in the official sources. Certified Austrian Access Points and SMPs appear in the OpenPeppol lists under OpenPeppol itself, which acts as the authority in jurisdictions without a national one. That is a meaningful simplification: there is no local body to apply to, and no national profile to be certified against.

Cross-border and foreign suppliers

A foreign supplier invoicing an Austrian federal body is subject to the same mandate as a domestic one — and the Austrian portal explicitly addresses foreign contractual partners, pointing them to UBL over Peppol as the practical route. A foreign company with a seat or fixed establishment in Austria is treated as domestic throughout.

Intra-EU B2B todayNo Austrian e-invoicing mandate. Ordinary VAT invoicing rules apply — the recipient's VAT number and a reverse-charge reference where the tax is due by the customer; both VAT numbers and a reference to the exemption for an intra-Community supply

Intra-EU B2B from 2030The ViDA digital reporting requirements apply. See ViDA and 2030

Export outside the EUNo Austrian e-invoicing mandate. Ordinary invoicing, export evidence and VAT treatment rules apply; XML or Peppol may be used contractually

The asymmetry worth flagging to clients: a business can be entirely free of e-invoicing obligations in its Austrian B2B trade and simultaneously bound by the strictest kind of mandate the moment a federal ministry becomes a customer.

ViDA and 2030

Because Austria has no domestic B2B mandate, ViDA is the operative future. Directive (EU) 2025/516 was adopted on 11 March 2025 and entered into force on 14 April 2025. From 1 July 2030 digital reporting based on structured e-invoicing applies to intra-EU B2B transactions and to transactions subject to mandatory reverse charge, using EN 16931. By 1 January 2035 member states with pre-existing domestic reporting systems must align them.

Two things follow for Austria specifically. The 2035 alignment obligation is currently inapplicable, because there is no domestic system to align. And Austria retains the option — unused so far — to introduce a domestic B2B mandate without seeking a derogation from the Commission, which is the change ViDA made in 2025.

The sober planning assumption: align invoice data to EN 16931, keep Peppol capability live, and treat 1 July 2030 as the fixed point. An Austrian business that adopts structured invoicing now is not gaining compliance — it is doing the 2030 migration on its own schedule instead of against a deadline shared with every company in the union.

Requirements for providers

Nothing beyond Peppol certification. No Austrian equivalent of the Slovak digitálny poštár, the Colombian Proveedor Tecnológico or Australian Peppol accreditation was found in the official sources. The federal portal states plainly that a supplier may use a service provider or set up its own Access Point.

A Peppol Access Point certified in another EU country can onboard Austrian clients directly, provided it sends valid UBL / Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 to the Austrian endpoint

No local Austrian presence, official electronic mailbox or local representative is required of the Access Point

OpenPeppol membership and certification, AS4 transport and the correct BIS profiles are the substantive requirements

Where a client insists on the portal route instead, the submitter needs USP access — a client-side matter, not a licence on the provider

The genuine work in Austria is not regulatory. It is supporting ebInterface for clients whose existing domestic flows use it, while sending UBL where Peppol is the channel — and keeping the two straight, because the portal accepts both and Peppol accepts only one.

Archiving

The general retention period under §132 of the Federal Fiscal Code (Bundesabgabenordnung, BAO) is seven years, running from the end of the calendar year to which the records relate. Records may be kept on data carriers provided complete, ordered, content-identical and faithful reproduction is guaranteed for the whole period.

Where real estate is involved the period runs considerably longer — up to 22 years, aligned with the twenty-year input VAT adjustment period for immovable property under §12(10) UStG

Authenticity of origin, integrity of content and legibility must hold across the entire retention period — not merely at the moment of issue

Archive the XML, not only a rendered PDF. The structured document is the invoice; the visualisation is a convenience

Longer periods can also arise from ongoing proceedings, appeals or other statutory grounds. Seven years is the baseline, not a ceiling

There is no state archive to fall back on. Unlike a clearance country, Austria keeps no copy of your B2B invoices, and the federal portal is a transmission service rather than an archive. The whole retention burden sits with the business.

Consequences and VAT deduction

No fixed statutory fine specifically for failing to use an e-invoice in federal B2G was identified in the official sources. Stating a figure would be inventing one. The consequence is structural rather than punitive — and in practice harder to argue with than a fine.

What actually happens

The invoice is not treated as properly submitted. It is not accepted, not processed and not paid, and it must be reissued in the correct format. Payment terms do not begin to run against a document that was never validly submitted. For a supplier this is a cash-flow event, not a compliance ticket.

Ordinary tax penalties are unaffected

Where an invoice carries incorrect VAT data, omits mandatory content under §11 UStG or applies the wrong treatment, the general fiscal penalty regime applies exactly as it would to a paper invoice. That exposure exists independently of the channel.

VAT deduction

An electronic invoice is not the only lawful basis for input VAT deduction in Austria. What the deduction requires is a proper invoice meeting the content requirements of §11 UStG with the tax shown separately. An electronic invoice qualifies where the recipient accepts it and authenticity, integrity and legibility are ensured — and a paper invoice remains fully valid in B2B and B2C.

The exception is the federal channel, where the structured e-invoice is not merely one option among several. There, it is the only form in which an invoice can be submitted at all.

How we help

Austria needs no national licence. What it needs is a provider that handles both the national format and the European one, and knows where the routing actually happens:

Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 and EN 16931 in both syntaxes — UBL 2.1 and UN/CEFACT CII

Conversion between ebInterface and UBL, so a domestic ERP flow can reach a Peppol-only channel

Delivery to 9915:b with the order reference validated before transmission, not after rejection

Addressing on 9914, 9915 and 9919, and on GLN where a counterparty uses it

Submission on the client's behalf, without the client needing USP access of its own

PDF visualisation alongside the XML for buyers who still work on paper

Preparation of intra-EU B2B flows for the ViDA requirements ahead of 2030

Connection by API, SFTP and CSV, with ERP and IDoc source data

Frequently asked questions

Is e-invoicing mandatory in Austria?

Only towards the federal administration, where it has been mandatory since 1 January 2014. Suppliers to federal bodies must submit structured e-invoices; paper and PDF are not accepted. There is no obligation for suppliers to the Länder, cities or municipalities, no domestic B2B mandate and no B2C mandate.

Is an Austrian B2B mandate coming?

Nothing has been announced — no bill, no date, no published implementation model. Since ViDA entered into force on 14 April 2025, Austria could introduce one without asking the Commission for a derogation, but it has not done so. The binding date remains the European one: 1 July 2030 for intra-EU B2B. Any roadmap showing an Austrian domestic date is inference rather than law.

Can I send ebInterface through Peppol?

No. Peppol carries UBL — in practice the Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 subset of UBL 2.1. ebInterface can be submitted through the USP / e-Rechnung.gv.at channel by upload, form or web service, but not over the Peppol network. If your client's ERP produces ebInterface and the chosen channel is Peppol, a conversion step is required.

Which Peppol address do I send federal invoices to?

A single one for the whole federal administration: iso6523-actorid-upis::9915:b. The individual ministry or agency is not identified by a separate endpoint — it is resolved from the order reference (Auftragsreferenz) inside the document. An incorrect order reference makes the invoice undeliverable even though the transport address was right.

Does my client need a USP account?

Not necessarily. Where the portal channel is used, it is the submitter who must have USP access, and submission through a third party — a service provider or a tax adviser — is expressly permitted. So the invoice issuer need not be registered itself. Over Peppol the question does not arise at all.

Can a foreign Peppol Access Point serve Austrian clients?

Yes. No separate Austrian accreditation, local presence, official mailbox or local representative was identified in the official sources. Peppol certification, AS4 transport and correct UBL / Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 output addressed to the federal endpoint are what matter. The Austrian portal specifically addresses foreign contractual partners and points them towards UBL over Peppol.

I am a foreign company with a branch in Austria — which rules apply?

A company with a seat or establishment in Austria is treated as domestic, and the federal B2G obligation applies in full when invoicing a federal body. Without an Austrian establishment the obligation still attaches to the contractual relationship with the federal body — the portal provides dedicated guidance for foreign suppliers precisely because they are in scope.

Can I still send PDF invoices?

In B2B and B2C, yes — a PDF, email attachment, web download, scan or fax is acceptable where the recipient agrees and authenticity of origin, integrity of content and legibility are ensured. Towards federal bodies, no: a paper invoice or a PDF by email is expressly not an e-invoice under §5 IKTKonG and will not be accepted. A PDF may accompany the structured invoice as a visualisation.

How long must invoices be kept?

Seven years from the end of the calendar year concerned, under §132 BAO. Where real estate is involved the period extends to as much as 22 years, tracking the twenty-year input VAT adjustment period for immovable property. Electronic storage is allowed provided reproduction remains complete, ordered, content-identical and faithful throughout — and it is the XML that should be kept, not only a rendered PDF.

What is the penalty for not e-invoicing to a federal body?

No dedicated fine was identified in the official sources. The consequence is that the invoice is not regarded as properly submitted: it is not accepted, not processed and not paid, and must be reissued correctly. Ordinary fiscal penalties remain available where the invoice content itself is wrong under §11 UStG — but those apply to paper invoices too.

Summary

Austria is strict in a narrow place and permissive everywhere else. The federal B2G mandate has run since 2014 and admits no paper, no PDF and no exceptions for size; the rest of the economy invoices as it likes. There is no clearance, no reporting platform, no national accreditation and no announced domestic B2B mandate.

Technically the country has one genuine peculiarity worth building for: a national format, ebInterface, that lives alongside UBL and cannot travel over Peppol — and a single federal endpoint where the real routing decision is made by a field inside the document rather than by the address on the envelope.

Which leaves a straightforward plan. Handle both formats, validate the order reference before you send rather than after you are rejected, keep the XML for seven years — and have the intra-EU B2B side ready before 1 July 2030, when ViDA stops making it a choice.

Resources

e-Rechnung.gv.at — the federal e-invoicing service The operational portal: channels, formats, validation and guidance for submitting to federal bodies Supported formats — ebInterface and UBL Which ebInterface versions are current, which are withdrawn, and where UBL applies ebInterface — the Austrian XML invoice format Version history and specifications for the national format that cannot travel over Peppol UBL at e-Rechnung.gv.at How the Peppol UBL subset is handled, including outside the Peppol channel Manual for Invoicing and Submitting (PDF, English) The official step-by-step guide, including the order reference and the submission process RIS — §5 IKTKonG The legal basis of the federal mandate, including when an invoice counts as properly submitted RIS — §11 UStG, invoice content requirements What an Austrian invoice must contain for input VAT deduction, electronic or not USP — retention obligations The seven-year rule under §132 BAO and the longer periods that displace it European Commission — eInvoicing in Austria The country profile recording the partial B2G mandate and the absence of B2B, B2C and real-time reporting Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 The profile used for UBL delivery to the Austrian federal endpoint Peppol Electronic Address Scheme code list Where 9914, 9915 and 9919 sit, alongside every other scheme you may need to address European Commission — VAT in the Digital Age (ViDA) The 2030 and 2035 obligations that will do what no Austrian legislation currently does Peppol Directory Confirm that an Austrian business is reachable on the network before you send

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