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The EU e-invoicing settings page in the Recurso dashboard

The EU e-invoicing settings page in the Recurso dashboard

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Structured e-invoices for the EU

The EU is rolling out structured e-invoicing mandates country by country — public sector (B2G) first, private sector (B2B) on national timelines. A structured e-invoice is not a PDF: it is a machine-readable document following the EN 16931 semantic model, expressed in a syntax and delivered over a network. Recurso generates a fully-structured e-invoice for a finalized invoice:
  • EN 16931 semantic model — the pan-European standard for the invoice content
  • UBL 2.1 syntax — the OASIS Universal Business Language, the Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 default
  • Per-tenant opt-in — off by default, because the mandate landscape is fragmented; you enable it only for the workspace and tenants where a mandate applies
  • Automatic delivery retries — a transient delivery failure is redriven on a backoff, not lost
EU e-invoicing is isolated from India’s GST e-invoicing (IRN clearance). They are separate compliance regimes with separate configuration — enabling one has no effect on the other. See E-Invoicing (India) for the IRP/IRN flow.
Recurso generates and stores the EN 16931 document today and hands it to a pluggable transport for delivery. Connecting a production Peppol Access Point is a configuration step performed with your chosen provider’s credentials — until that is wired, documents are generated, validated, stored, and retrievable, and the delivery step is exercised by a built-in transport. The generation and retry behaviour described below is unchanged once a live Access Point is connected.

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How it works

Generation runs after the invoice is committed — it never blocks or rolls back invoicing. A tenant that has not opted in is a silent no-op.

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Enable EU e-invoicing

Configuration is a single per-tenant object: the opt-in flag plus your EN 16931 seller identity. You can manage it in the dashboard under Settings → EU e-invoicing, or via the API.

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Update configuration

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Configuration parameters

Setting enabled: true requires legal_name, vat_number, and a valid two-letter country_code — an EN 16931 document cannot be built without a complete seller identity. The request is rejected if any are missing.

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View current configuration

Returns the stored config, or an empty disabled default when none is set.

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Automatic generation

Once enabled, Recurso generates an e-invoice for every finalized invoice — no extra API calls.
1

Invoice is finalized

When an invoice is committed (via subscription billing or manual finalization), Recurso projects the seller from your EU config and the buyer from the customer.
2

Document is built

An EN 16931 document is generated in UBL 2.1 syntax, with per-rate VAT subtotals reconciled to the invoice total to the cent.
3

Delivery

The document is handed to the transport for delivery to the recipient’s Access Point. On success, the delivery message id and sent status are stored.
4

Stored and retrievable

The document and its delivery status are stored against the invoice.

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The buyer party

The buyer is projected from the customer record:
  • VAT id comes from the customer’s tax id
  • Country is normalized to an ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code (common EU country names are mapped; a two-letter code passes through)
  • Name and postal address come from the customer’s billing details
For a cross-border B2B sale, the customer’s VAT id drives reverse-charge treatment. Keep customer tax ids and billing countries accurate — a missing VAT id or an unrecognized country is the most common reason generation fails.

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Delivery status and retries

Each stored e-invoice carries a status: Recurso distinguishes the two ways an e-invoice can fail, and treats them differently:
The document is built and stored, but the transport (Access Point) could not be reached — a transient problem. A background worker redrives delivery on an exponential backoff (5 minutes → 15 minutes → 1 hour → 6 hours → 24 hours), re-transmitting the already-generated document. After 5 failed attempts the record is left failed for manual attention.
The document could not be built — typically a data problem such as a missing buyer VAT id or an invalid country. This will not fix itself on retry, so it is not auto-redriven: the record is left failed so you can correct the customer data and regenerate. Regenerating replaces the record.

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Connecting a Peppol Access Point

Delivery to the Peppol network is handled through a pluggable transport. To go live you connect a Peppol Access Point provider (for example a certified service provider) with its credentials; the generation, validation, storage, and retry behaviour above are unchanged — only the delivery hop becomes a live Peppol transmission.
Reach out if you are selecting an Access Point provider — the transport is designed so a provider is a configuration step, not a code change.

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Best practices

EU e-invoicing is per-tenant and off by default for a reason: mandates differ by country and by B2G vs B2B. Enable it for the tenants and workspaces that need it, rather than globally.
legal_name, vat_number (with country prefix), and country_code are mandatory to enable. Fill the address fields too — they are recommended for a fully-compliant document.
Most generation failures come from the buyer side — a missing VAT id or an unrecognized country. Validate these at customer creation and keep them current.
A failed delivery is redriven automatically on a backoff. You do not need to retry it yourself; watch for records still failed after the retry window, which indicate a persistent problem.
Generated EN 16931 UBL invoice

A generated EN 16931 UBL 2.1 invoice (Peppol BIS Billing 3.0)

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Next steps

Set up EU e-invoicing

Enable EN 16931 output per tenant

Invoices

The documents these standards shape