E-invoicing in Slovakia from 1 January 2027: what changes for VAT payers, sole traders and companies

From 1 January 2027, Slovak businesses will exchange invoices differently. A VAT payer selling in Slovakia to other businesses and to legal entities will have to issue structured electronic invoices and send them through a certified delivery service provider. Sole traders who are not VAT payers will have to be able to receive them too.^⁠[1]

This guide covers who is affected, what exactly counts as an e-invoice, how it is delivered, what gets reported to the Financial Administration, the fines, and what is worth doing before the end of the year.

At a glance

• Who issues: a VAT payer registered in Slovakia, when supplying goods or services to another business or a legal entity established in Slovakia.^⁠[1]
• Who receives: every customer of such a supply, including sole traders who are not VAT payers.^⁠[1]
• What an e-invoice is: a structured file under the European standard EN 16931 (for example in UBL), not a PDF.^⁠[1]⁠[4]
• How it travels: through a certified delivery service provider; in Slovakia delivery runs on the Peppol network.^⁠[1]⁠[5]
• Reporting: the Financial Administration receives the invoice data; the obligation is met by handing the e-invoice to the delivery service.^⁠[1]
• Fines: up to €10,000 for not reporting the data or reporting it late or incorrectly, up to €100,000 for repeated breaches.^⁠[1]

When it applies and which law sets it

Mandatory e-invoicing was introduced by Act No. 385/2025 Coll., which amends the Slovak VAT Act (No. 222/2004 Coll.). Parliament passed it on 9 December 2025 and it was promulgated in the Collection of Laws on 19 December 2025.^⁠[1] The act also transposes Council Directive (EU) 2025/516, known as ViDA (VAT in the Digital Age). ViDA lets Member States make e-invoices mandatory for domestic transactions and, from 1 July 2030, introduces them for trade between businesses in different Member States.^⁠[1]⁠[3]

Who is affected

VAT payers issue

An e-invoice must be issued by a VAT payer registered in Slovakia (under § 4, 4b or 4c of the VAT Act) who, from 1 January 2027, supplies goods or services with the place of supply in Slovakia, or receives a payment before such a supply. The customer must be:^⁠[1]

• a taxable person with a registered office, place of business, establishment or residence in Slovakia (a company or a sole trader), whether a VAT payer or not,
• a legal entity that is not a taxable person and has its seat or a fixed establishment in Slovakia, for example a municipality, a school or a civic association.^⁠[1]

The obligation therefore covers business-to-business trade (B2B) and sales to the public sector (B2G). From 1 January 2027, contracting authorities must be able to receive e-invoices through a delivery service and process them.^⁠[1]

Non-VAT payers must be able to receive

A sole trader who is not a VAT payer does not have to issue e-invoices. From 1 January 2027, however, they must be able to receive an e-invoice sent through a delivery service: the law places this duty on everyone to whom goods or services are supplied in Slovakia for which the supplier must issue an e-invoice.^⁠[1] In practice this means choosing a 'digital postman' (digitálny poštár), the Financial Administration's name for a certified delivery service provider.^⁠[7]

What is out of scope

• sales to consumers (B2C), i.e. private individuals,
• supplies exempt under § 28 to 43 and § 47 of the VAT Act, for example financial and insurance services, supplies of goods to another Member State or exports,
• cases where the VAT payer issues a simplified invoice (a document up to €100 including VAT or an eKasa cash-register receipt up to €400 including VAT),^⁠[2]
• suppliers registered in Slovakia as foreign persons (under § 5): the 2027 obligation applies to VAT payers under § 4, 4b and 4c,^⁠[1]
• supplies to the Slovak Information Service, Military Intelligence and supplies involving classified information: an e-invoice must not be issued there.^⁠[1]

What an e-invoice is and why a PDF is not enough

Under the law, an electronic invoice is a document that contains all the required invoice particulars and is issued, sent and received in an electronic format that allows automated processing, in a data structure that follows the technical standard for electronic invoicing.^⁠[1] That standard is the European standard EN 16931, which allows two syntaxes: UBL and UN/CEFACT CII.^⁠[4]

A PDF sent by e-mail does not meet the definition: it is a picture of an invoice, not data the customer's software can read without retyping. Good invoicing software shows a readable view of any e-invoice, but it is the structured file that counts. What the invoice itself must contain is covered in Invoice requirements in Slovakia 2026.

A document that changes an e-invoice, such as a credit note, must be an e-invoice too. It carries the number of the original e-invoice and the data that change, and if the original went through a delivery service, so must the correction.^⁠[1]

How e-invoices are sent: the delivery service and Peppol

E-invoices are delivered by a delivery service run by a certified provider registered by the Financial Directorate of the Slovak Republic; the Financial Administration calls these providers digital postmen.^⁠[2]⁠[7] The provider must automatically check the formal particulars of the e-invoice, reliably identify the sender and the addressee, ensure the origin, integrity and legibility of the invoice, prove when it was sent and delivered, and automatically meet the reporting obligations towards the Financial Administration.^⁠[2]

The delivery service follows a European delivery standard. In Slovakia that is the Peppol network, and its national authority is the Financial Directorate of the Slovak Republic.^⁠[5] How the network works day to day is explained in Peppol in practice.

Issuing an e-invoice does not require the customer's consent. During the transitional period, however, sending it any other way than through the delivery service (by e-mail, for instance) requires the customer's consent.^⁠[1]

Reporting to the Financial Administration

E-invoices come with a reporting obligation. The supplier reports the e-invoice data when the invoice is issued; a customer who is a VAT payer reports the data within five days of receiving it.^⁠[1] The data are reported through the delivery service, and the obligation is met by handing the e-invoice over to it; there is no separate form to fill in.^⁠[1]

The technical format of these reports, the Slovak Tax Data Document, was published by OpenPeppol as version 1.0.0 in April 2026.^⁠[6] The government bill now before parliament proposes to drop the customer's reporting obligation (see below).

Deadlines and archiving

• Issuing deadline: an e-invoice must be issued within 15 days of the supply of goods or services, or of receiving a payment before the supply.^⁠[1]
• Summary e-invoice: covers several supplies within at most one calendar month and must be issued within 15 days of the end of that month.^⁠[1]
• Archiving: e-invoices are kept for ten years from the end of the calendar year they relate to.^⁠[1]
• Archive format: where a law sets the electronic format of an accounting record, the accounting entity must also keep it in that format. Archive the structured file itself, not just its PDF view.^⁠[1]

How long to keep invoices, in what form and what changes with e-invoicing is covered in Keeping invoices in Slovakia.

Fines

The tax office fines a VAT payer up to €10,000 for not reporting the data or for reporting it late, incompletely or incorrectly. For repeated breaches the fine can reach €100,000.^⁠[1]

The amount reflects how serious the breach is and how long it lasted. No fine is imposed for an obvious error the payer has corrected, or for a provable technical failure on the delivery service provider's side, provided the payer reports the data without delay once it is fixed.^⁠[1]

What may still change

Among other things, the bill proposes that:^⁠[9]

• customers would no longer report the data of received e-invoices: reporting would stay with the supplier only,
• between 1 January and 30 June 2027 the tax office would not fine late issuing of e-invoices or errors in reporting the data; the duty to be able to receive e-invoices would not be affected,
• non-VAT payers renting out VAT-exempt real estate that is not part of their business assets would not have to be able to receive e-invoices relating to that rental, unless they must receive e-invoices for another activity.

We will update this article once parliament decides.

What to do now

• Check whether you are a VAT payer. A VAT payer will issue and receive e-invoices; a non-VAT payer must be able to receive them.
• Choose a certified delivery service provider from the Financial Administration's list. You pick one after logging in to its portal, and the provider registers you on the Peppol network.^⁠[8]⁠[7]
• Find out whether your invoicing or accounting software can create an EN 16931 e-invoice and hand it to your provider, or whether it offers the digital postman service itself.
• Check your customers' details: business name, address, company ID (IČO), tax ID (DIČ) and VAT ID (IČ DPH).
• Set up ten-year archiving of the structured files.
• Agree with customers who will not be ready in time: you may send them an e-invoice outside the delivery service only with their consent.
• Try sending and receiving while 2026 is still voluntary.
• Follow the amendment in parliament and the Financial Administration's guidance.

How to choose a digital postman on the Financial Administration portal is described in Choosing a digital postman step by step.

How vporiadku helps

You can upload a received UBL e-invoice to vporiadku manually and read it in a human-friendly view on every plan, including the free Start plan; on the Profi plan you turn it into an expense in one click. Creating an e-invoice in UBL 2.1 under EN 16931 / Peppol BIS 3.0 and validating it before sending are built, but they will be made available only together with sending over the Peppol network.

Sending over the Peppol network is not running yet: vporiadku is not a certified delivery service provider, and sending through a certified partner is being prepared. Not a single document has gone out to the Peppol network so far; general availability is planned for Q4 2026. The current state of each part is on our e-invoicing 2027 page.

You can try vporiadku for free, check the pricing or use our free tools, such as the VAT calculator or the invoice generator.