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Guide
E-invoicing for freelancers, explained
Across Europe, invoices are becoming structured files a computer reads — not paper shaped like a PDF. Here is what that means for a freelancer, in plain words.
An e-invoice is not a PDF of an invoice. It is a structured data file — every amount, date, tax rate and party in machine-readable fields — that accounting software ingests without a human retyping anything. The EU’s common vocabulary for those fields is a standard called EN 16931, and country by country it is moving from optional to required.
Who actually needs this?
- Invoicing a public body — most EU governments already require structured e-invoices for public-sector suppliers (Germany asks for XRechnung, Spain routes signed Facturae files through FACe, France uses Chorus Pro).
- Invoicing businesses in Germany — since 2025 German businesses must be able to receive EN 16931 e-invoices, and issuing them becomes mandatory in phases over the next few years. A freelancer billing a German studio will be asked for one sooner or later.
- Invoicing businesses in Spain — Spain approved its B2B e-invoicing regulation in March 2026: the largest companies must issue structured invoices first, everyone else — freelancers included — roughly two years behind them, and invoices exchanged outside the state platform must carry an electronic signature. Facturae remains an accepted format. Big studios will normalise the format across their supplier flow well before their freelancers are obliged to.
- Invoicing businesses elsewhere in the EU — B2B mandates are phasing in country by country. The direction of travel is one way; the dates differ.
- Everyone else — no obligation yet, but a client’s accounting software still reads a hybrid e-invoice automatically, which means fewer retyping errors and faster approval of your invoice.
The formats, translated
- EN 16931 — the European standard itself: the agreed list of fields an invoice must carry. Not a file you send, but the vocabulary the files below speak.
- Factur-X / ZUGFeRD — a hybrid: a normal, print-perfect PDF with the EN 16931 XML embedded inside (as archival PDF/A-3). Humans read the page; software reads the data. One file does both jobs.
- XRechnung — Germany’s profile of EN 16931, required by German public-sector buyers; carries a routing id called a Leitweg-ID.
- Facturae — Spain’s XML format, required for Spanish public bodies via FACe and signed with a digital certificate (XAdES).
What a freelancer should actually do
- Keep issuing a beautiful PDF — humans still approve invoices. Just make it a hybrid (Factur-X) so the machine-readable layer rides along.
- Fill in the fields the standard cares about: your VAT/tax id, the client’s, the right tax treatment (standard, zero-rated, exempt, reverse charge), and clean line items.
- If a public body is involved, ask which channel they use (XRechnung by mail/portal, FACe, Chorus Pro) and submit the file there.
- Don’t buy an accounting suite just for this — the document format is the hard part, and a tool you already invoice from can produce it.
How toqe handles it
toqe builds the compliance into every export, chosen automatically from your tax country. Each invoice PDF is a Factur-X hybrid carrying its own EN 16931 XML (validated against the official KoSIT rules, veraPDF-clean); billing a German public buyer lifts the profile to XRechnung 3.0 with its Leitweg-ID; Spanish invoices export as Facturae 3.2.2, signed XAdES-EPES on the desktop with your own certificate — the signing happens on your machine, and the certificate is never uploaded anywhere. VAT treatments — standard, zero-rated, exempt, reverse charge — are per-invoice, with the right note printed for cross-border work. No add-on, no per-document fee. Try it on sample data in the live demo.
Where a country routes invoices through a network or portal (FACe, Chorus Pro, a Peppol access point), you submit the file toqe produces through that channel. Mandate timelines shift — check your tax authority for the dates that apply to you.
FAQ
Is a PDF invoice an e-invoice?
No. A plain PDF is a picture of an invoice — a human reads it, software cannot. An e-invoice carries structured data fields; a hybrid like Factur-X is both at once, which is why it is the friendliest format for freelancers.
Do freelancers need e-invoicing yet?
If you invoice EU public bodies, mostly yes already. If you invoice German businesses, your clients must be able to receive them now and will be required to issue them in phases — expect to be asked. Elsewhere it is coming country by country, and a hybrid invoice already works everywhere a PDF does.
What’s the easiest way to send a compliant e-invoice as a freelancer?
Use a tool that emits a Factur-X hybrid PDF — one file that is both the readable invoice and the structured data. toqe does this on every export, with XRechnung and Facturae where those apply, for a one-time price rather than an accounting-suite subscription.
Do I have to hand my digital certificate to a cloud service to sign Facturae?
No — and you probably shouldn’t. A qualified certificate (FNMT and the like) is a legal identity: it can sign tax filings and contracts, not just invoices. Cloud invoicing tools sign on their servers with a copy of it; the free government route (the ministry’s Facturae app plus AutoFirma) keeps the certificate local but means hand-filling every invoice across two dated desktop tools. toqe signs on your own machine, from the invoice you already made — the certificate never leaves it.
What about Verifactu?
A different obligation, often confused with e-invoicing: from 2027 businesses established in Spain must record invoices in certified billing software (hash-chained records, QR codes). It says nothing about the invoice file you hand a client. If you bill Spanish clients from outside Spain it does not apply to you; if you are an autónomo in Spain, ask your gestor what your setup needs.