Everyone is talking about e-invoicing in Latvia, and the dates get muddled. Here is the clear picture: what is already mandatory, what is still voluntary, and when structured e-invoices become compulsory for every business.

What a “structured e-invoice” actually is

The biggest misconception first: a PDF you email to a client is not an e-invoice in the legal sense. A structured electronic invoice is a machine-readable XML file that conforms to the European standard EN 16931 and, in Latvia, is produced in the Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 / UBL 2.1 format. To a human it looks like a wall of data, but your buyer's accounting system reads it and books it with no manual typing.

The timeline: who, and when

There are three separate stages, and they are easy to confuse:

  • B2G (business → government): mandatory since 1 January 2025. If you invoice a state or municipal budget institution, it must be issued as a structured e-invoice. (Public bodies have had to accept EN 16931 e-invoices since 2019, when Latvia transposed EU Directive 2014/55/EU.)
  • B2B (business → business): voluntary since 1 January 2026. Since that date you may submit e-invoice data to the State Revenue Service (VID), for example through the official e-address (Cabinet Regulation No. 749 of 9 December 2025). This is not a mandatory date, it is the option to start early.
  • B2B: mandatory from 1 January 2028. From then on, every company registered in Latvia must issue invoices to other companies as structured e-invoices.

A mandatory duty started on the same day: since 1 January 2026, e-invoice data for transactions involving the state (G2G/B2G/G2B) must additionally be reported to VID. That is a reporting obligation, separate from the obligation to issue the invoice itself, another easy thing to conflate.

What this means for you

If you work with municipalities or state institutions, you need structured e-invoices already. If you only invoice other businesses, you have until 2028, but nothing stops you from starting sooner, and starting sooner spares you the last-minute scramble.

An e-invoice carries the same mandatory details as a PDF invoice, only in XML fields. The full list, with the legal references, is on what a Latvian invoice must contain.

How Fakts handles it

Fakts already generates Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 / UBL 2.1 XML e-invoices alongside an ordinary PDF, today. You never have to look at the XML, you fill in the invoice as usual and the file is ready to send through a Peppol access point or upload to your e-address. Numbering stays sequential and every mandatory EN 16931 field is filled in for you.

E-invoicing deadlines have already moved once and could, in theory, move again. This article reflects the position as of September 2026; check the Ministry of Finance and VID websites before making important decisions.