Mandatory use of the National e-Invoicing System (hereafter: KSeF) will significantly affect the issuing and receiving of invoices in the course of business. It is therefore worthwhile, if you have not yet started preparing for the implementation of KSeF, to familiarise yourself with the basic principles in this area. We would also like to encourage you to read our list of steps necessary for the implementation of KSeF, which you can find under the link KSeF – Assessment of readiness for the new obligation.

At the outset, it is worth recalling that, as of 1 July 2024, businesses will use structured invoices, recorded in the form of a strictly prescribed XML file. It is in electronic form only and is issued according to a top-down logical structure.

Issuing invoices

The issuing of invoices using KSeF is possible in two ways, i.e:

• directly in the free KSeF application, which has been made available by the Ministry of Finance, by filling in all the necessary data;
• through external commercial accounting software integrated with KSeF, which allows the invoices to be automatically uploaded to KSeF or manually loaded in XML format.

Entering a structured invoice manually without the use of an accounting programme (even if only to prepare the invoice in XML format) can be difficult, so the Ministry of Finance has provided a KSeF Taxpayer Application Usage Guide, which includes a step-by-step guide on how to do this.

Once a sales invoice has been correctly issued and sent, it will automatically appear in the buyer’s KSeF account. It is worth noting that the system verifies the authority of the person issuing the invoice and complaince of the data with the scheme, and not the factual correctness of the data entered. If, for example, the wrong tax identification number (hereafter: NIP) of the contractor is entered, this invoice must be corrected ‘to zero’ and a separate invoice containing the correct NIP number must be sent.

Structured invoices can be sent to the system in bundles or individually, but sending them in bundles, although a faster, more efficient way, carries the risk that the whole bundle of structured invoices will be rejected due to one defective file. If you decide to send multiple invoices in one package, we recommend that you verify the data entered, as it can take KseF several days to process a large group of structured invoices.

Receiving invoices

A structured invoice is deemed to have been received on the date the identification number is assigned (and not, as before, on receipt). The taxpayer will be able to download the structured invoice from the government platform in one of three selected formats (XML, HTML, PDF). It is important to verify the content of such an invoice after downloading it, in order to eliminate any errors.

List of invoices

All issued and received structured invoices will be located in the “Invoice list” menu item in KseF. When you click on this option, you will be able to select one of four tabs (sales invoices, purchase invoices, third-party invoices, authorised invoices) to view and download the structured invoices there.

Summary

The above only describes the basic information about the mechanism for entering and receiving structured invoices in KSeF.

We will provide more details on the differences between the currently used invoices and the structured invoices in a future entry.