E-invoicing takes delay out of the route your invoice travels before the customer pays. The invoice arrives directly in your customer's software, does not need to be retyped and the date of receipt is fixed. That saves processing time and errors. But whether customers actually pay faster as a result has hardly been studied properly. Late payment often has a cause other than the invoice itself.
In short
- An e-invoice is structured data that goes straight into your customer's software. A PDF sent by email is not an e-invoice.
- Research shows that e-invoicing lowers processing and compliance costs. That customers pay faster as a result has not been properly shown.
- The statutory payment term runs from receipt of the invoice. An e-invoice makes that date clear. In Belgium, e-invoicing between businesses has been mandatory since 1 January 2026.
About the research in this article: there is little scholarly research that directly measures whether e-invoices lead to faster payment. This article therefore distinguishes between what has been shown (lower processing and compliance costs) and what is plausible but not proven (faster payment).
In this article
What exactly is an e-invoice?
An e-invoice is an invoice in a structured digital format that goes directly from your software to your customer's software. A PDF you send by email does not count as an e-invoice (Belgian Federal Public Service Finance, 2026). Your customer's software reads in the data itself: amount, VAT, invoice number and due date.
In Europe, e-invoices often travel via Peppol, a network your accounting software connects to, much like a phone connects to a telephone network (Belgian Federal Public Service Finance, 2026). Suppliers to the Dutch central government already have to invoice electronically. The government receives e-invoices through its own access point on Peppol (Logius, 2026).
Do you get paid faster with e-invoices?
That is plausible, but not well proven. An overview of 191 scholarly publications on e-invoicing between 1997 and 2021 shows that the research field is still young and leaves many questions open (Olaleye et al., 2023). Studies that properly measure whether customers pay an e-invoice faster than a PDF hardly exist.
What is clear is where the time is saved. An e-invoice does not need to be retyped, scanned or looked up at your customer. In a case study at a large international company, a well-designed e-invoicing process considerably reduced processing time (Naghshineh et al., 2025). That study covered one company, so the result does not simply apply to everyone.
Faster processing does not automatically mean money sooner. A customer who pays on day 30 will keep paying on day 30. The difference lies with invoices that currently get stuck: lost, wrongly retyped or not yet approved.
Why do customers pay late?
Often it is not the invoice. In a survey of 211 small British manufacturers, 59.5% called late payment an important or very important problem. At the same time, 89% said they also paid their own suppliers late to a greater or lesser extent (Peel et al., 2000).
So an e-invoice removes the technical reasons for delay, but not a customer's choice to hold on to your money longer. For that, clear agreements, good follow-up and statutory interest matter more.
Which payment terms apply in the Netherlands?
Have you not agreed a payment term with a business customer? Then the customer owes statutory interest 30 days after receiving the invoice (Article 6:119a Dutch Civil Code). So the date the invoice arrives is the starting point.
Is the date of receipt of the invoice not established? Then the 30 days only start from receipt of the goods or services (Article 6:119a Dutch Civil Code). An e-invoice arrives directly in the customer's system. That makes it easier to show when your invoice was there.
If you do agree a term, it is in principle at most 60 days. If the customer is a large company and you are an SME, the agreed term may not be longer than 30 days (Article 6:119a Dutch Civil Code).
What does e-invoicing demonstrably deliver?
Lower costs of complying with tax rules. A systematic literature review concludes that e-invoicing lowers compliance costs for businesses and administration costs for the tax authority (Hesami et al., 2024). Compliance here means everything you have to do to report your VAT and other taxes correctly.
The strongest evidence comes from Peru. There, e-invoicing for VAT was introduced step by step, which gave researchers a good comparison. In the first year after switching, firms' reported sales, purchases and VAT rose by more than 5%. The effect was largest among small firms (Bellon et al., 2022).
The researchers explain this mainly by e-invoicing making it easier to comply with the rules, and harder not to (Bellon et al., 2022). For you as an honest business owner, the first part is what matters most: less manual work around your VAT records.
Is e-invoicing becoming mandatory?
For some businesses it already is. Since 1 January 2026, all Belgian VAT-registered businesses must use structured e-invoices with each other (Belgian Federal Public Service Finance, 2026). If you do business with Belgian customers, you will probably encounter this. Check with your customer what they expect from you.
Europe is pushing in the same direction. Public bodies in the EU have had to be able to receive e-invoices according to the European standard since 17 April 2019 (Belgian Federal Public Service Finance, 2026). The European VAT in the Digital Age package (ViDA) was adopted on 11 March 2025. Since 14 April 2025, member states may, under certain conditions, make e-invoicing mandatory domestically. From 1 July 2030, digital reporting requirements apply to cross-border transactions between businesses (European Commission, 2025).
If you switch now, you can learn to work with e-invoices at your own pace. Ask your accounting software provider whether it can send and receive e-invoices via Peppol, and start with the customers who ask for it themselves.
Sources
- Olaleye, S.A., Sanusi, I.T., Dada, O.A. & Agbo, F.J. (2023). A bibliometric review of global visibility, impact and adoption of electronic invoicing: The past and the future. Heliyon, 9(3), e13726. doi.org
- Naghshineh, B., Feijao, V., Sieben, B. & Carvalho, H. (2025). E-invoicing process reengineering: A case study. Business Process Management Journal, 32(7), 2261-2285. doi.org
- Peel, M.J., Wilson, N. & Howorth, C. (2000). Late payment and credit management in the small firm sector: Some empirical evidence. International Small Business Journal, 18(2), 17-37. doi.org
- Hesami, S., Jenkins, H.P. & Jenkins, G.P. (2024). Digital transformation of tax administration and compliance: A systematic literature review on e-invoicing and prefilled returns. Digital Government: Research and Practice, 5(3), 1-20. doi.org
- Bellon, M., Dabla-Norris, E., Khalid, S. & Lima, F. (2022). Digitalization to improve tax compliance: Evidence from VAT e-invoicing in Peru. Journal of Public Economics, 210, 104661. doi.org
- Dutch Civil Code Book 6, Article 119a (statutory commercial interest and payment terms). Text in force, consulted 14 October 2026. wetten.overheid.nl
- Logius (2026). E-invoicing. Consulted 14 October 2026. logius.nl
- Belgian Federal Public Service Finance (2026). Structured electronic invoices between businesses mandatory since 2026, and What is Europe doing to promote e-invoicing? Consulted 14 October 2026. efactuur.belgium.be and efactuur.belgium.be
- European Commission (2025). VAT in the Digital Age (ViDA). Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union. Consulted 14 October 2026. ec.europa.eu