E-invoices & Peppol

An e-invoice is not a PDF. It is structured data that travels from your accounting software straight into your client's, over a network called Peppol — no email, no attachment, no one retyping line items at the other end.

Peppol is the pan-European network for exchanging e-invoices. Since July 2025, Estonia's e-invoice operators are interconnected through it, so a single Peppol connection reaches Estonian businesses registered to receive e-invoices. Arvello registers your company on the network as part of invoice setup, and falls back to PDF email for clients who are not on it.

Getting verified

Before your company can send or receive e-invoices, it needs a one-off identity verification. You are taken to Recommand, Arvello's e-invoicing partner, to confirm you are authorised to represent the company and accept their terms, then complete a quick ID check on your phone — a photo of your ID document and a selfie. It takes about two to three minutes, and the network confirms your identity automatically a few minutes after you finish.

While verification is outstanding, it appears on your dashboard checklist as Verify your company for e-invoicing. You are also prompted the first time you try to send an e-invoice: a dialog offers Open Verification, and once you have completed the check, Check Status confirms it.

Sending an invoice as an e-invoice

Whether a client can receive e-invoices is checked against the Peppol Directory using their registry code (registrikood — the company's number in the äriregister, Estonia's Business Register). Contacts that can are badged Accepts e-invoices, and a Check button on the contact re-queries the directory whenever you like.

For a Peppol-reachable client, the invoice page offers Send as E-Invoice as the primary action, with Send as PDF alongside — the choice is per invoice, and sending an e-invoice finalises a draft in exactly the same way as sending a PDF. Delivery is then tracked on the invoice's Activity tab:

Your plan includes a monthly e-invoice allowance covering sent and received documents combined; once it's used up, e-invoice sending stops until the next month or a plan change, and you can send the invoice by email as a PDF instead. See Plans & billing.

Receiving e-invoices

When suppliers send you e-invoices over Peppol, they land in Expenses → Received E-Invoices. Arvello processes each arrival into ready-to-review records:

1. The sender is matched to an existing contact by registry code or VAT number — or a new supplier contact is created. A new supplier gets a registry code only if the e-invoice carries one; KMD INF lists suppliers by it, so a VAT return's review checklist names such a supplier once its invoices reach the KMD INF threshold.
2. A draft purchase invoice is created from the line items.
3. A draft journal entry is prepared.
4. Arvello looks for a matching outgoing bank payment. A single confident match links automatically, several candidates are flagged for review, and no match simply means the invoice is not paid yet.

Nothing posts to your books until you choose Approve & Post, which finalises the purchase invoice and posts the entries; Reject discards the drafts instead. A bulk approve exists for clearing the month in one sitting. From there the document behaves like any other purchase invoice.

Approve & Post checks each draft line before posting. If a line's VAT rate or VAT amount does not match its tax code — a supplier's rate that no Estonian code carries, say — the approval is refused with a message naming the line. Open the draft expense, correct the tax code or the amounts, save it, and approve again.

A line the supplier marks as reverse charge gets a reverse-charge code chosen from the supplier's VAT number: Reverse charge, non-EU supplier (0%) when the number is from outside the EU, Reverse charge, Estonian supplier (0%) when it's Estonian (the domestic reverse charge on property, metal waste, precious metals and metal products), and Reverse charge, EU supplier (0%) otherwise. The KMD reports them on different lines — see VAT rates & tax codes.

A supplier can also state a discount or a charge for the document as a whole — a volume discount, a freight charge — rather than on any one line. The draft is built from the lines, so it does not carry that amount: a line of €100.00 under a document discount of €10.00 is a document of €90.00 before VAT and a draft of €100.00. When the document's total before VAT differs from the sum of its lines — overall, or at any one VAT rate, as when a discount at 24% and a zero-rated charge cancel each other out — its page shows both figures and Approve & Post is refused while the draft still carries the lines' amounts. Once the draft's amounts have been edited to the document's — a discount taken off the lines it applies to, a charge added as a line of its own — approval goes ahead with what the draft then says. The same applies to a received credit note. One case cannot be settled by editing: a document whose totals state discounts and charges that it does not list with their VAT rates, where the draft is already right — a discount and a charge at the same rate that cancel each other out. Arvello cannot tell that from the document, so the draft stays held; the document can be rejected and the expense recorded by hand.

Received credit notes

A supplier's credit note (kreeditarve) arrives the same way and is marked Credit note in the list and on its page. Arvello reads which invoice it credits from the document — its number, and its date when the credit note states one — and, when that matches exactly one finalised purchase invoice from the supplier, builds a draft purchase credit note against it — every figure a reduction, at the invoice's tax codes. Approve & Post then posts the reversal, lowers what is owed on the invoice and reduces the input VAT on the KMD, exactly as a credit note you record by hand does. Each line of the draft starts in the expense category of the invoice line it credits, so the reversal lands where the cost was booked, and a line that covers costs booked to two categories is split between them; you can change the categories on the draft before approving. When the credit note doesn't say which invoice it credits, names more than one invoice, or the number matches none or several, the page asks you to choose the invoice; the draft is built once you do. A credit note that names several invoices is never matched automatically, because in Arvello a credit note is recorded against one invoice: its page lists the invoice numbers it names, and the draft built for the invoice you choose carries the whole credit note — its lines can be edited on the draft before approving. Only invoices dated on or before the credit note are offered, because a credit note can't credit an invoice issued after it. The list covers the supplier's invoices even when the supplier appears twice among your contacts — for instance once as you typed it in and once as created from its first e-invoice — as long as the two share a registry code, a VAT number or a name. A credit note is not matched to bank payments — it isn't paid.

Common questions

My verification is still pending

The identity check must be completed by an authorised representative of the company. Re-open it from the dashboard checklist item or the Open Verification link, complete the check, then use Check Status to confirm. Until then, invoices can still go out as PDFs.

My client is not found on the network

The Peppol lookup needs the client's registry code, so first confirm the contact record has one. Then use Check on the contact to re-query the directory. If the client genuinely is not registered to receive e-invoices, they receive the PDF by email instead — the invoice content is identical either way, and the Send as E-Invoice option appears once they become reachable.

My invoice can't go out as an e-invoice

An invoice with Not subject to VAT lines can only travel as an e-invoice when your company is not VAT-registered and every line on the invoice is such a line; in every other case the European e-invoice standard (EN 16931) forbids it. Arvello shows a message when this applies — send the invoice as a PDF instead; the content is identical.

An e-invoice carries the registry codes the invoice was issued with, and the network delivers it by them. So when your client's registry code has changed since the invoice was issued, or the invoice shows a different registry code for your company from the one your e-invoicing is registered under, Arvello won't send it as an e-invoice. Send it by email as a PDF instead.