Estonian Bank E-invoices and Sending

In addition to Estonian B2B (business-to-business) e-invoicing over the operator network, it's possible to send e-invoices to banks. Sending to banks allows for one-click payments (banks fill the payment form based on the e-invoice) as well as automatic payments. Banks accept invoices sent to both private individuals and businesses.

In practice, invoices are primarily sent to banks for private individuals. Business accounting often goes through accountants who have their own processes for handling invoices. On the other hand, it's not uncommon for a PDF invoice sent via email to a private customer to be overlooked. Enabling recurring payments reduces the risk of forgetting to pay and saves the customer's time with pre-filled payment forms. In fact, sending to banks is today the only way to send e-invoices to private customers apart from just emailing them.

An important distinction between sending to operators and sending to banks is the cost. Banks charge about twenty cents per sent invoice, making sending to banks through a paid service in Billberry. You can find the exact pricing by signing into Billberry, but Billberry's pricing should be the best on the market, ranging from €0.22 to €0.25 per invoice.

If you're a developer and want to generate e-invoices for banks yourself and send them via Billberry's API, take a look at the bank e-invoice standard documentation.

Supported Banks

Billberry supports sending to all Estonian banks that accept e-invoices. Currently, there are five of them:

• Coop Pank
• LHV
• Luminor
• SEB
• Swedbank

Activation

You can activate sending to banks in Billberry on your company or organization's settings page. Activation is free and automated, meaning there are no registration fees nor do you need to sign any contracts. You only pay for sent invoices.

While activation on Billberry takes a second, you've got to wait for banks to confirm the activation before you can start sending. This process happens automatically behind the scenes and typically takes an hour or two. Once everything's ready, Billberry will let you know via email.

Every invoice sent costs, and Billberry will send you an invoice at the end of the month.

Invoice Creation

E-invoices meant for banks are regular Estonian e-invoices (XML files) with the channel attributes set to the bank and recipient's bank account. Technically, this means setting the channelId and channelAddress attributes of the e-invoice. If you're creating e-invoices with accounting software, it should handle this for you. If you're a developer, you can find more information in the bank e-invoice standard guide.

Sender

For e-invoices sent to banks, it's essential that the sender's name matches both a) the organization's legal name and b) is the same as the name on the bank account where the customer makes the payment to. It's safest to use the name registered in the Business Register.

This is particularly relevant for apartment associations, which often have long names and are frequently abbreviated. For example, the official name of "J. Kunderi 42 KÜ" is "Tallinn, J. Kunderi tn 42 korteriühistu." Using an abbreviated name could result in some banks rejecting the e-invoice.

Unlike business-to-business e-invoices where the sender's (seller's) bank account numbers are not mandatory, e-invoices sent to banks require the bank account information along with the bank's BIC.

Receiver

For the recipient (buyer) of the invoice, enter either the company's registry code (as with regular B2B e-invoices) or the person's identity code.

As mentioned, your accounting software should fill in the e-invoice channel fields for you, but if it doesn't, you should use the recipient's bank's BIC as the channel identifier (channelId attribute). The BICs for supported banks can be found in the table below:

The channel address (channelAddress attribute) should be the recipient's bank account number (or for Luminor bank, the recipient's registry code/personal id).

Sending to Banks with Billberry

If you have an e-invoice file ready to send to a bank, you can initiate the process in Billberry. If the invoice is properly formatted, Billberry will show you the bank the invoice will be sent to and the cost of sending it.

Sending to Banks Standard Books

Standard Books supports sending and receiving regular e-invoices through Billberry, as well as sending to banks.

You can find info on how to use Standard Books to send to banks on their e-invoice sending page (in Estonian). You can also refer directly to Standard Books' short setup guide for e-invoices (in Estonian) and the setup video on YouTube (in Estonian).