As of 1st January, 2021 all economic entities are required to use electronic invoices. Please continue reading to learn how you can most easily align your own business to this new requirement.
Article 9 of the Accounting Act defines an accounting document as a written or electronic record of a transaction presenting every piece of information that is required for accounting purposes and explicitly stating the ground, type and nature of the business transaction.
Under applicable law, “invoice” is a type of accounting document that is created and sent to legal entities and entrepreneurs in an electronic format once its validity has been confirmed by a responsible person who affixes a signature or other identification mark as specified for this purpose in the entity’s general act dictating accounting policy.
This update to the definition of an accounting document shall apply from 1st January 2022, providing enough time for economic entities to adjust to the new regime of issuing electronic invoices during the year 2021. Namely, in the course of 2021 they will be allowed to continue with paper-based billing as they gradually move towards digitalization. However, once we are in 2022, paper invoices will no longer be accepted as valid accounting documents.
“Accounting document” is equally a document issued or received via telecommunications, as well as one issued or received through electronic data interchange. The sender is responsible for including true and complete data in an invoice.
Every accounting document issued electronically must contain the signature or other identification mark of the responsible person and/or the person authorized to issue accounting documents and/or electronic signature according to law.
Legal entities and entrepreneurs are required to nominate a person to check the authenticity of each accounting document. That person uses his/her signature or some other identification mark to validate the accounting document’s veracity (meaning it is complete, true, computationally correct and reflective of all aspects of the business transaction).
There is a legal restriction imposed regarding the person appointed to check the authenticity of an accounting document. Such a person cannot be responsible for managing material property referenced by the accounting document. This is a security mechanism ensuring that no fabricated documents are issued, that fair and true financial statements are put together and employers are endowed with greater legal safety.
Legal entities and entrepreneurs must take all the necessary measures to protect accounting documents against the loss of data or any damage or modifications done to it and must ensure that the technical equipment, data carriers and software used are free from abuse at all times. As far as our government is concerned, there is no mandatory software to be used across the spectrum of industries. It is up to an individual entity to choose (buy or develop) its own software to effectively meet its specific business needs.
Accounting documents may be stored on an electronic medium as original electronic documents or digital copies provided the relevant government authority is granted access to the saved data and providing:
- the data stored on an electronic document or recording can be accessed and is suitable for further handling;
- the data is stored in the form in which it is created, conveyed and received;
- the sender, recipient, time and place of transmission and receipt can be determined from the saved electronic document;
- technology and procedures are applied which sufficiently prevent the alterations and deletion of data or some other reliable means is used to guarantee the permanence of data or messages, and a backup database is kept at another location.
There is more to this topic:
- It is possible to use a copy of a document to record a transaction if the copy indicates the place of safekeeping the original.
- Once an accounting document is made, it is delivered to the accounting department to be posted within no more than five workdays from the date of the transaction and/or within five workdays of the date of receipt (the same deadline applies to checking the authenticity of an accounting document).
- People in charge of keeping accounting records are obliged to check the validity of the accounting documents they work with and book the transactions within five workdays of their receipt.
