E-invoicing and digital reporting are developing rapidly across Europe and beyond.
As a result, many businesses are focusing on selecting the right platform, integrating it with their ERP system and meeting the technical requirements for invoice formats. However, early experience from France points to a more fundamental challenge:
Is the data behind the invoice actually correct?
For CFOs, this development means that VAT compliance is no longer simply a matter of ensuring accurate and timely reporting. The quality of a company’s transactional data – and the way its business activities are translated into systems and processes – is increasingly becoming an integral part of compliance.
France’s implementation of mandatory B2B e-invoicing in September 2026 provides a current example of what happens when VAT compliance becomes digital. Challenges have included missing mandatory information, issues with business identification and registrations, inconsistent VAT data, and errors in mapping and system configuration.
Some errors arise within the technical solutions. Others originate much earlier – in the company’s own data and processes.
This is an important consideration for businesses operating internationally.
A technically correct invoice is not necessarily correct from a VAT perspective
E-invoicing is often treated as an IT project. A company selects a technical provider, connects the solution to its ERP system and ensures that invoices can be generated and transmitted in the required structured format.
However, a technically functioning connection does not in itself ensure that the underlying VAT treatment is correct. If customer data is incomplete, VAT numbers are incorrect, transactions are misclassified, or the VAT treatment does not reflect the actual flow of goods or services, the digital solution will simply carry those errors forward.
Technology can transmit data. It cannot make incorrect data correct.
The challenge is therefore not purely technical. Businesses need to translate their actual commercial activities and international transactions into the correct VAT treatment – and ensure that this treatment is accurately reflected in their data and systems.
Data quality is therefore becoming an increasingly important part of international VAT compliance.
From France to a broader international development
France is not an isolated example.
E-invoicing, e-reporting and digital transaction reporting are being introduced in an increasing number of markets. National models vary, but the direction of travel is the same:
VAT reporting is moving closer to the individual transaction.
The same development can be seen in Denmark. From 1 March 2027, providers of registered digital bookkeeping systems will be subject to new requirements intended to increase the use of structured e-invoicing through NemHandel.
From January 2027, registered Danish digital bookkeeping systems must also support SAF-T 2.0, enabling the standardised exchange of accounting data at transaction level.
Denmark is therefore not introducing a general mandatory B2B e-invoicing requirement in 2027. However, the development reflects the same broader trend: financial and tax data is becoming increasingly structured, detailed and digitally accessible.
At EU level, ViDA will accelerate this development further. From 1 July 2030, new Digital Reporting Requirements will apply to certain cross-border B2B transactions within the EU, based on structured e-invoicing.
For international businesses, the question is therefore no longer simply whether their systems can issue an electronic invoice in France, Denmark, Poland or Italy.
The key question is whether the business can produce accurate and consistent data across systems, legal entities and jurisdictions.
International trade places greater demands on data
An international supply of goods may involve a selling legal entity in one country, a warehouse in another, a customer in a third and a VAT registration in a fourth.
The correct VAT treatment may depend on factors including:
- which legal entity is making the supply
- which VAT numbers are being used
- the status of the customer
- where the goods are located
- where the transport begins and ends.
At the same time, the information required to determine the correct treatment may be distributed across the ERP system, master data, tax engines, logistics systems and local processes.
The more international and complex a business becomes, the greater the need for alignment between its commercial reality, its data and its VAT treatment.
Digital VAT compliance should therefore increasingly be viewed as one connected data chain:
Commercial transaction → master data → ERP → VAT classification → invoice → e-invoicing/e-reporting → VAT reporting
An error early in the chain does not disappear simply because the subsequent processes are automated.
On the contrary, digitalisation can make errors visible at an earlier stage. An incorrect VAT code, VAT ID or classification of a movement of goods can flow through invoicing and e-reporting and ultimately affect VAT reporting.
This increases the need to identify errors at source rather than correcting them later in the reporting process.
From VAT reporting to control of the underlying data
In our view, this is one of the most important consequences of the move towards digital compliance.
Traditionally, businesses have placed significant emphasis on the final stage of the process:
Is the VAT reporting correct and submitted on time?
That question remains important.
However, as tax authorities gain earlier and more detailed access to companies’ transactional data, another question becomes equally important:
Is the underlying data correct before it reaches the invoice and the VAT reporting process?
E-invoicing should therefore not be approached solely as a matter of platform selection and technical integration. It should also address the quality of the company’s master data, VAT classifications, transaction mapping and the alignment between its actual business activities, ERP system, invoicing and VAT reporting.
For businesses engaged in international trade, this means that the work on e-invoicing should begin before the technical implementation. The company’s transactions, VAT treatment and underlying data need to be properly understood and structured first. Technology can then automate the process.
Technology provides the infrastructure. Accurate data is what makes it work. And correct VAT treatment starts with a clear understanding of the underlying business transactions.
