Slovakia’s e-invoicing mandate takes effect on 1 January 2027. From that day Slovak VAT payers must issue structured e-invoices for domestic B2B and B2G supplies, and practically every business and public body established in Slovakia must be able to receive them through a certified delivery service (act no. 385/2025 Coll., which amends the VAT act). This checklist turns the statute into twelve steps for the last quarter of 2026. The legal background is in Mandatory e-invoicing: Slovakia 2027, Germany and ViDA.
Who must do what by 1 January 2027
Issuing (§ 85o par. 2 of the VAT act) falls on VAT payers registered under § 4, § 4b or § 4c, that is businesses established in Slovakia, for goods and services supplied in Slovakia to a person listed in par. 3: a taxable person established in Slovakia or a non-taxable legal person seated there. Advance payments are included; supplies exempt under §§ 28 to 43 and § 47 and those settled with a simplified invoice are excluded. Receiving (§ 71 par. 5) is wider: every person to whom such a supply is made must be able to receive the e-invoice via the delivery service, VAT payer or not. B2C sales are out of scope.
| Who you are | Issue | Receive | Report invoice data |
|---|---|---|---|
| VAT payer established in Slovakia | Yes, domestic B2B and B2G | Yes | Yes, as issuer and as recipient, through your provider (§ 85o par. 9 to 11) |
| Taxable person that is not a VAT payer (sole trader, small company, landlord) | No | Yes | No |
| Non-taxable legal person seated in Slovakia (municipality, school, association) | No | Yes | No |
| Foreign company with no establishment in Slovakia | Not under the domestic mandate | Not required | No |
An e-invoice here is not a PDF. Under § 85o par. 4 it is issued, sent and received in a format that allows automated processing and in the data structure of EN 16931, on the Peppol network UBL 2.1 per Peppol BIS Billing 3.0. It is due within 15 days of the supply or advance payment (par. 6); a monthly summary e-invoice within 15 days of the month end (par. 7).
Steps 1 to 3: confirm scope, find your Peppol ID, check your counterparties
Step 1: Confirm your scope. Classify each legal entity with the table above, then look at the invoice flows: which domestic customers are businesses or public bodies, which supplies are exempt or settled with a simplified invoice, and whether you issue corrective documents, because a credit note that changes an e-invoice sent via the delivery service must go the same way (§ 85o par. 5).
Step 2: Find your Peppol ID. A Slovak company’s production identifier is scheme 0245 (the DIČ scheme in the Peppol code list v9.7) plus the ten-digit DIČ, for example 0245:2121358349, with no “SK” prefix. The 9950:SK form is used only on the test network, and 0158 (IČO) is an active scheme in the Peppol code list since v9.7 but is not used for Slovak registrations in the national central SMP, which works with 0245:DIČ. Foreign schemes and the lookup are explained in Peppol ID: schemes, lookup and registration.
Step 3: Check which counterparties are reachable. Run your main suppliers and customers through the free Peppol ID checker; it shows whether the company is listed in the public Peppol Directory (name, identifier and supported document types). Companies that have not published a Directory entry can still be registered, so treat a miss as a prompt to ask, not as proof. Expect gaps.
Steps 4 to 6: choose a certified provider on the Finančná správa portal, verify, activate receiving
Step 4: Choose a certified delivery-service provider. Only providers entered in the register kept by the Financial Directorate may offer the delivery service (§ 76a par. 5 and 7); the Financial Administration calls them “digitálny poštár”. You select yours in the PDS application on the Financial Administration portal (vpds.financnasprava.sk): sign in via slovensko.sk (eID) or with your portal identifier and password, choose the taxable person (it needs an assigned DIČ), enter a contact e-mail and phone number, and allow the portal to pass the data to the provider. Anyone authorised to act for the company on the portal, an accountant for example, can do it; at the June 2026 launch the Financial Administration said it takes no more than two to three minutes. The selection is not a contract; the provider still concludes the service agreement with you.
The law adds a selection criterion: a provider that has not proved to the Financial Directorate by 15 December 2026 that it can report invoice data under § 85o par. 9 to 11 is removed from the register on 1 January 2027 (par. 19), so prefer one whose reporting already runs in production. Reporting uses the Slovak Tax Data Document (TDD), an OpenPeppol specification of April 2026 that the provider’s Access Point sends to the Financial Administration for the issuer and for the recipient. Verteco digital services, s. r. o. is one of the listed providers: we operate our own certified Access Point (Finančná správa accreditation decision no. 605502941/2026 of 26 May 2026, PA SK ID EFSK000031 (seat PSK001128)), passed 19/19 OpenPeppol conformance tests and have sent the TDD in production since 1 September 2026; 66 companies and public bodies were connected through our Access Point as of 10 October 2026.
Step 5: Let the provider verify the company. The portal sends your identification data and an encrypted verification value to the provider by e-mail and webhook, with a copy in your FS message box. The provider checks the value and registers the company under 0245:DIČ in the national central SMP operated by PA SK and Finančná správa, with Verteco usually within minutes; if the contact e-mail has no account yet, one is created automatically and a sign-in link is sent. Sending stays locked until then, so nobody can issue invoices in your name.
Step 6: Activate receiving and decide about the archive. With Verteco, receiving without the Data archive is free (fair use up to 1,000 received invoices a month; see free inbound e-invoices). The complete service (sending, Data archive with 1 GB of original XML in the EU, REST API, webhooks, connectors, several IČO under one login, tax reporting to Finančná správa) costs €2 + VAT a month per company from 1 January 2027, with 1,000 documents a month included, sent and received together, and €0.01 for each further document. The voluntary period until 31 December 2026 is free.
Steps 7 to 9: make your software ready, test on the Peppol test network, validate samples
Step 7: Decide how invoices get in and out. Three routes: your accounting or ERP system exports UBL 2.1 per Peppol BIS Billing 3.0; it talks to the provider’s REST API or the national SAPI-SK interface, with webhooks for received documents and delivery status; or you issue in the provider’s portal and export to your bookkeeping. Verteco exports received documents in formats for POHODA, Money S3/S4, OMEGA, MRP and MK-soft and as XML or CSV; the trade-offs are compared in Peppol integration with your accounting and ERP system.
Step 8: Test on the Peppol test network, not in production. Verteco’s test environment at test.peppol.verteco.digital sits on the Peppol test network and is free: no contract, no e-mail confirmation, companies approved automatically, test documents deleted after 60 days. Send an invoice (type code 380), a credit note (381) and a tax document for a received payment (388) end to end and check that your system handles the MLS delivery receipt and the webhook events; see the developer documentation.
Step 9: Validate a sample of every document type you issue (380, 381, 383, 388, self-billing 389) against the UBL schema, EN 16931 and the Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 Schematron rules. Verteco’s public validator needs no account and returns the failing rule identifiers (for example BR-CO-15) with a plain-language explanation.
Steps 10 to 12: archive policy, informing counterparties, PDF until 2030
Step 10: Write down your archive policy. A VAT payer keeps an e-invoice for ten years from the end of the calendar year it relates to (§ 85o par. 15; general rules in § 76), must guarantee authenticity of origin, integrity and legibility for the whole period (§ 71 par. 3) and must give the tax office access to electronically stored invoices (§ 76 par. 5). The duty covers the XML itself and stays with the taxpayer: Verteco’s Data archive keeps the original XML in the EU (1 GB per company) for as long as you use the service, exportable at any time, but it is not a ten-year statutory archive, so route the originals into your own document store as well.
Step 11: Inform counterparties and your accountant. Tell suppliers that from 1 January 2027 you receive e-invoices under 0245:DIČ, and ask customers for their identifier. Agree with your accounting office who selects the provider, who holds the login and who processes received e-invoices; one login can manage several companies.
Step 12: Plan for counterparties still on PDF. Issuing an e-invoice needs no consent from the recipient. Sending it by any channel other than the delivery service, for example EN 16931 XML attached to an e-mail, needs the recipient’s consent (§ 85o par. 2), which may be withheld. When an e-invoice is sent outside the delivery service with the recipient’s consent, no invoice-data report is due for it: § 85o par. 9 applies only to e-invoices sent through the delivery service, and the Financial Administration confirms in its eFaktúra FAQ that neither supplier nor recipient reports such invoices. You still need a certified provider because § 71 par. 5 requires every issuer to be able to send, and every business to be able to receive, e-invoices through the delivery service, and outside it you lose provable delivery and the automatic reporting. The transitional regime of § 85o runs until 30 June 2030; the options are compared in Peppol transition to 2030: PDF and e-mail.
Timeline: what to finish in Q4 2026 and what can wait
- October 2026: steps 1 to 3.
- November 2026: steps 4 to 7: provider selected and verified, receiving on, software route agreed.
- By 15 December 2026: steps 8 and 9 on the test network; the same day is the providers’ deadline under § 85o par. 19, so check that yours is still in the register on 1 January.
- 31 December 2026: last day of the free voluntary period.
- 1 January 2027: the mandate applies. A supply made on 2 January must be e-invoiced within 15 days, so the January invoicing run is the first live test.
- Can wait: foreign group companies without a Slovak establishment, e-ordering (the Peppol network supports orders and despatch advices, but the Slovak mandate covers invoices only) and the cross-border phase the Financial Administration expects from 1 July 2030, when the remaining provisions of act 385/2025 take effect (art. VIII).
- 30 June 2030: the transitional regime of § 85o ends.
Special cases: non-VAT payers, municipalities, sole traders, foreign suppliers
Non-VAT payers have no issuing or reporting duty, but they must be able to receive (§ 71 par. 5); a free receiving account with a certified provider covers it. Municipalities, schools and other public bodies seated in Slovakia are recipients under § 85o par. 3 letter b) even where they are not taxable persons, and they issue where they are VAT payers. Sole traders follow the same logic: a VAT payer issues and receives, a non-payer only receives, under 0245 plus the personal DIČ. Foreign suppliers and buyers: both duties address businesses established in Slovakia (§ 85o par. 2 and 3); in our reading a company registered for Slovak VAT only under § 5 is not covered, so confirm your case with a tax adviser. You can send Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 invoices to Slovak customers from any Access Point under your home scheme (9929:CZ, 9930:DE, 9914 for Austria) without the Finančná správa portal; XRechnung or ZUGFeRD files must be mapped to UBL first.
Mistakes that surface in the voluntary period
- Writing the identifier as 0245:SK2121358349; the prefix creates a different identifier.
- Selecting a provider and never checking the result: if no confirmation arrives within about ten minutes, the selection may not have reached the provider (wrong contact e-mail, failed FS webhook, receiving held by another provider). Check the FS message box, where the portal reports a failed webhook, and the Peppol Directory.
- Treating an e-mailed PDF as an e-invoice; without EN 16931 XML, and without consent outside the delivery service, the issuing duty is not met.
Next step: open your free receiving account, select Verteco on the Finančná správa portal when you are ready, and switch on sending in one click in December. For your specific case, contact the Peppol team; the rest of the cluster is on the Peppol hub.
