What is ViDA and why does it affect your invoice flow?
VAT in the Digital Age (ViDA) is the EU legislative proposal that makes e-invoicing and digital VAT reporting mandatory for all member states. The core requirement: from 2028, e-invoicing must be the standard for cross-border B2B transactions within the EU. National mandates per country are expected to follow. The Netherlands has not yet introduced a B2B mandate, but surrounding countries are already moving. Belgian customers will only accept structured Peppol invoices from 2026 onwards. Failing to deliver that risks payment delays or outright rejection.
Which countries already have a mandate, and what does that mean for Dutch exporters?
Italy was first (2019), followed by Portugal (2023), France (2024, with the B2B rollout on 1 September 2026), and Germany (2025). Belgium follows on 1 January 2026 with a full B2B mandate via the Peppol network, including fines of up to 5,000 euros for non-compliance. Spain has its own regulation from 2026 under the so-called Crea y Crece law. The legal obligation targets companies established in those countries, but supply chain pressure flows through: if your Belgian customer can only process Peppol invoices, you need to be able to send them, regardless of where you are based. Research shows that only 1 in 10 Dutch SMEs is ready for the e-invoicing mandate.
What changes in the document flow with e-invoicing?
A PDF invoice sent by email is not an e-invoice in the legal sense. E-invoicing means a structured file (such as UBL or CII) transmitted via a recognised network like Peppol that the receiving software can read directly without manual data entry. That sounds like an advantage, and it is for the recipient. But for anyone currently sending invoices as PDFs and receiving them as attachments in Outlook, the change involves more than just a file format. Moving from 'manually booking a PDF' to 'automatically processing structured data' requires that your accounting or ERP system can actually receive and handle those files.
What if you still receive PDF invoices from foreign suppliers?
This is where the practical pain lies for many Dutch finance teams. As long as foreign suppliers are not yet sending Peppol invoices, the mix will persist: structured invoices via Peppol from one supplier, PDFs from another, sometimes an Excel file, sometimes a scan. Processing that mixed flow within a single workflow without errors creeping in is exactly where things already go wrong. Automated invoice processing that handles multiple formats is no longer a luxury but a prerequisite for managing this transition. Companies that make the move to automated processing now are also building the foundation for the world after full ViDA rollout.
When does a Dutch company need to act?
For purely domestic B2B invoices, there is no legal deadline in the Netherlands yet. But if you are already supplying Belgian, French or Spanish businesses, the supply chain pressure is real today. The ViDA timeline for cross-border transactions points to around 2028, with national mandates expected to follow shortly after. That means two years to get your systems and processes in order, not two months. Companies that wait until legislation is in force risk having to switch overnight while daily operations need to keep running. The honest recommendation: do not start with the mandate as a forcing function, but with the question of how much time you currently spend manually keying in incoming invoices.