Invoicing a Finnish Customer From Abroad: What They Can Demand

A Finnish business can ask you, a foreign supplier, for a structured e-invoice, and a PDF attached to an email will not satisfy that request. The right comes from section 4 of the Act on Electronic Invoicing (241/2019) and has applied since 1 April 2020. You meet it by delivering an EN 16931 invoice to the buyer's e-invoice address, either through an operator that has an agreement with the buyer's operator, or over Peppol if the buyer has a Peppol identifier. This page sets out what the buyer can ask for, the two routes, and the steps from the first request to the first delivered invoice.

Finland has no business-to-business e-invoicing mandate and no date for one. This is a buyer's right to ask, not a rule that every invoice must be electronic. GoRoute carries the Peppol route only. We do not send Finvoice, we have no connection to Finnish banks or operators, and we do not register Finnish addresses.

What can a Finnish buyer demand from a foreign supplier?

A structured e-invoice, on request. Section 4 of the Act says a contracting entity and a trader have the right to receive, on request, an invoice from another contracting entity or trader as an electronic invoice. Section 2 defines a trader as a business whose turnover in the financial period is more than EUR 10,000, and an electronic invoice as one that is created, sent and received in a structured form that allows automatic processing and complies with the European standard EN 16931 in one of its listed syntaxes. We read the consolidated text on Finlex on 10 November 2026. It has five sections.

Three points follow from the text:

• A PDF is not an e-invoice. The State Treasury says it plainly: the state does not receive invoices attached to an email "as this is not an electronic invoice".
• The Act names no format. The buyer has a right to an invoice that meets the standard, not to a particular file type.
• The Act is silent on foreign suppliers. It defines a trader by reference to Finland's Business Income Tax Act. We found no official guidance on how that applies to a supplier with no Finnish tax presence. That is our reading of a gap, not the law. Our advice is to treat the request as a commercial condition of the contract, because a supplier that cannot comply becomes the exception in the buyer's accounts payable. TIEKE puts the share of invoices processed electronically in Finland at about 90%.

The Finland page has the full table of who can ask whom: e-invoicing in Finland.

How does the request reach you?

The Act sets out no procedure, so the request arrives however the buyer works. It may come from the buyer's accounts payable team, in a supplier onboarding form, or in a contract clause. What you need from it is the same each time: the buyer's legal name and Finnish business ID, and the address the invoice must be sent to.

If the buyer sends only a business ID and not an address, you can look the address up yourself. The next article in this set shows how: how to find a Finnish company's e-invoice address.

Which route delivers the invoice: an operator or Peppol?

Either, depending on which address the buyer has. Finland uses a four-corner model, where each side connects through its own e-invoice operator or bank, and the two intermediaries pass the invoice between them. TIEKE, the body that runs the national address register, describes the foreign-sender case in one sentence: sending from outside Finland is possible if the foreign company has an agreement for sending e-invoices with a local operator that, in turn, has an intermediary agreement with the operator or bank serving the recipient.

The operator route needs an operator that reaches the buyer's operator or bank. Ask your provider, in TIEKE's words, whether it supports e-invoicing abroad and to which countries. GoRoute does not provide this route.

The Peppol route needs the buyer to have a Peppol identifier. The State Treasury is the Finnish Peppol Authority. TIEKE says Finnish Peppol addresses in the national access control list must use the scheme code 0216, and that public bodies must publish theirs there. The Peppol Directory also lists Finnish participants. On 10 November 2026 it returned 14,827 entries for Finland. In a sample of 300 of them we counted 195 under scheme 0216 and 102 under scheme 0037; the sample was the first pages the Directory returned, not a random draw, so read it as an illustration, not a share. The practical rule is to copy the identifier exactly as the buyer's entry shows it. Which scheme means what is explained in which Peppol identifier is yours.

TIEKE also notes that Peppol is still the smaller network in Finland: at the end of 2024 the number of Peppol invoices among all e-invoices was "still very low", with growth expected. So a Finnish buyer may well have an operator address and no Peppol identifier. If so, the Peppol route is closed for that buyer, and you are back to the operator route.

Which formats do Finnish operators accept?

Finland uses both national and EU-level formats. TIEKE lists Finvoice and TEAPPSXML as the national formats, says the latest versions of both are interoperable with each other and with EN 16931, and notes that banks use only Finvoice while operators use TEAPPSXML and convert to Finvoice when needed. Operators validate invoices sent in the EN 16931 format, and an invoice that fails validation is not passed on.

For central government the State Treasury says the state is ready to receive the Commission's two syntaxes for the European standard, UBL 2.1 and Cross Industry Invoice D16B, and that it accepts only invoices that follow that standard. Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 is a UBL 2.1 invoice with Peppol's rules on top; see what a UBL invoice is.

One warning from TIEKE applies if you build the invoice yourself: an invoice that passes Finvoice EN 16931 validation may be rejected by the Peppol network, because in some cases stricter rules apply there. Validate for the route you will actually use.

What are the steps from the first request to the first delivered invoice?

1. Confirm the buyer is a Finnish business and get its legal name and business ID (the Y-tunnus). Only organisations with a business ID appear in the national register.
2. Find the address. Search the national register at verkkolaskuosoite.fi, which TIEKE says is free to search, and the Peppol Directory. Note both the address and the operator ID next to it.
3. Choose the route. If the buyer has a Peppol identifier, send over Peppol. If it has only an operator address, ask your own operator whether it can reach that operator.
4. Build the invoice to EN 16931. The content a Finnish VAT invoice needs, including the reverse-charge wording a foreign seller adds, is set out in Finnish VAT invoice requirements.
5. Send one invoice and keep the receipt. Check that it was delivered, not only sent.
6. If the buyer is a public body, add the references it asks for. The public sector article lists them.

For step 5 over Peppol, post the invoice as JSON to the GoRoute API or use one of our connectors, and GoRoute checks the buyer's registration before sending. You can try it in the free developer sandbox.

What this page does not cover

Finnish VAT registration for a foreign supplier is outside this page. Whether Finnish VAT applies to your sale depends on where the sale is treated as taking place, and the Tax Administration's guidance is the place to check it. Procurement rules for bidding on public contracts are likewise out of scope.

What to do next

List your Finnish customers and sort them into two groups: those that have a Peppol identifier and those that have only an operator address. For the first group, you can send from your ERP or through the API today. For the second, ask your current provider which Finnish operators it reaches.

The Finland page covers the rules and the address system in full. Peppol delivery shows how the network works, the documentation covers the API, and the tutorials show an invoice being sent. To have a Finnish buyer looked up with you, book a call. For a wider view of choosing a provider, read how to choose a Peppol access point.

GoRoute is a certified Peppol Access Point (POP000991).

Primary sources: Act on Electronic Invoicing by Contracting Entities and Businesses (241/2019), Finlex; TIEKE, E-invoicing in Finland for foreign companies and Sending and accepting e-invoices to and from Finland; State Treasury, Invoicing the state and Peppol Authority; Peppol Directory, read 10 November 2026.