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The Dutch government will make structured B2B e-invoicing mandatory from 1 July 2030, with digital reporting to follow. The law is not written yet. The work that makes 2030 easy can start anyway.
If your company invoices other businesses in the Netherlands, you probably send a PDF by email and your customers type or scan it into their own system. That is about to end. On 11 September 2026 the Dutch government announced that Netherlands e-invoicing becomes mandatory for B2B transactions from 1 July 2030, for domestic invoices as well as intra-EU ones, with digital reporting of the invoice data to the tax authority following in phases.
Four years feels like a long time, and there is no law yet. Both are true, and both are reasons people will wait. This article sets out what was announced, what is still open, and the work you can do in 2027 that will pay off whatever the final law says.
According to the summaries of the announcement published by Meijburg and VATupdate, the plan looks like this:
The intra-EU part is not a Dutch choice. It follows from the EU’s VAT in the Digital Age package (ViDA), which requires structured e-invoices and digital reporting for cross-border B2B supplies from July 2030 in every member state. What the Netherlands added is the domestic part: the same rules for an invoice from Utrecht to Rotterdam as for one from Utrecht to Antwerp.
A public consultation is expected in the autumn of 2026, the bill should go to parliament before the summer of 2027, and the government wants it approved before 1 July 2028. That leaves two years between the final law and the start date. Until then, several things that matter for your system are open: the exact reporting window, the data set the tax authority will receive, how credit notes and corrections are handled, the delivery network, and the penalties.
Most ERP systems can already produce an EN 16931 invoice, or will by 2030 through a standard update or an add-on from your partner. Belgium went through this in 2025 and Germany is going through it now. The format is the easy part. What causes trouble is what goes into it.
A structured invoice is read by a machine on the other side. A missing VAT number, a customer address that is three years out of date, a unit of measure that only your warehouse understands or a purchase order reference typed in the wrong field: on a PDF a person works around it, in a structured invoice it is a rejection. And once the tax authority receives the data from both supplier and customer, a mismatch between the two becomes visible to someone other than you.
List every place that produces an outgoing invoice: the ERP, but also the webshop, the service tool, the subscription billing system, the spreadsheet someone in sales uses for one large customer. Do the same for incoming invoices. In most mid-sized companies the list is longer than anyone expects, and each item on it needs a decision before 2030.
VAT numbers, legal names, addresses, Peppol or other electronic addresses where you have them, payment terms. Make one person in the business responsible for each master data object, so it stays clean after the cleanup. This is the same work any ERP migration needs, and it is cheaper to do once, calmly, than twice under pressure.
If you have entities in more than one country, you now have Belgium (Peppol since 2026, e-reporting planned from 2028), Germany (issuance obligation from 2027) and the Netherlands (2030) on different timelines. Solving each country separately with a different provider is how groups end up with three integrations and nobody who understands all of them. Decide which ERP and which service provider will handle e-invoicing across the group, even if the countries go live at different times.
Nothing stops you from accepting structured e-invoices from your suppliers today. Every supplier you move over before 2030 is one less problem in 2030, and your accounts payable team learns what goes wrong while there is no deadline.
Not “will you support e-invoicing”, which every partner will answer with yes. Ask what version of your ERP you need to be on in 2030, whether that is supported until then, and what it will cost to get there. If you are on an old version, the answer may be that the e-invoicing deadline is really an upgrade deadline.
Netherlands e-invoicing in 2030 will not be difficult because of the XML. It will be difficult for companies whose invoice data is spread over too many systems and maintained by nobody in particular. The law will take until 2028. The cleanup does not need to wait for it, and a company that uses 2027 to fix its master data and choose one approach for the group will find 2030 to be a configuration task rather than a project.
Belgium’s 2028 E-Reporting: What It Means for Your ERP
Germany’s 2027 E-Invoicing Deadline: What Groups With a German Subsidiary Need to Do Now
Dynamics NAV End of Support: What to Decide Before January 2028
Application Management service
VATupdate: Netherlands to mandate B2B e-invoicing in 2030, e-reporting in 2031 (September 2026)
Grant Thornton: EU ViDA VAT reform, what your business needs to know
KEEP READING
From 2028, Belgium plans to have both supplier and customer report every domestic B2B invoice to the tax authority in near real time. Peppol was a connectivity project. This one is about your data.
From 1 January 2027, German companies with more than €800,000 turnover must issue structured e-invoices. If your group owns a German subsidiary, its ERP has about three months left to get ready.
Most businesses treat their ERP as set-and-forget. That’s a costly mistake. Here’s what active management looks like.
Book a free 30-minute discovery call. We will look at where your invoices come from and what Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands mean for your ERP over the next four years.
Currently accepting new engagements, starting now and into 2027.
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