Standards Development

Scope

CEN/TR 16931-5 (Electronic invoicing - Part 5: Guidelines on the use of sector or country extensions in conjunction with EN 16931-1, methodology to be applied in the real environment). 

Purpose

The European Commission is in its project “VAT in the digital age” proposing a legislative reform to mandate that VAT reporting on intra-EU transactions shall be based on EN 16931-1. It is furthermore assumed that any reporting on domestic transactions will also be based on the EN. To facilitate such a mandate, it is further expected that legal requirements will be introduced on private businesses to implement e-invoicing based on the EN 16931 deliverables. EN 16931-1 was deliberately designed to focus on “core” invoicing functionality, thus recognising that there are business requirements that are not covered. While this approach meets the requirements for electronic invoicing in the B2G market, there is a need for additional functionality to support the B2B market. To support B2B market needs for additional functionality the CEN/TR 16931-5 (“Extension Methodology”) was designed to provide guidelines on how industries may create individual specifications, known as “Extension Specifications”, to cater for their specific needs.

To further facilitate interoperability in the B2B market there is a need to review and provide updates to the current CEN/TR 16931-5 (“Extension Methodology”) and possibly upgrade the deliverable to a TS.