Over the coming years we will be hearing a lot more about e-invoicing because the government has confirmed that it will be mandated for VAT invoices from 2029. It believes that growth, administrative benefits and increased revenue can be optimally achieved by the introduction of e-invoicing.
Electronic invoicing or ‘e-invoicing’ is the digital exchange of invoice data between a buyer and a supplier’s financial systems. An e-invoice is not just a digital photograph or an email attachment – it will require both the supplier and customer to have compatible software so that data in prescribed fields can be transmitted from one to the other.
At Budget 2025 the government announced that in 2029, business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-government (B2G) VAT e-invoices will be mandatory. They also confirmed that real-time reporting of e-invoices to HMRC will also be mandated in future, although this will occur after 2029.
The government plans to announce a detailed roadmap implementing mandatory e-invoicing for VAT at Budget 2026.