Invoicing

Why is invoicing so important at the start?

In case the Hungarian tax office issues a tax number to a newly registered foreign company, then all invoices that relates to this tax number must fit the Hungarian requirements. Firstly these invoices must be in accordance with the regulation of the Hungarian VAT Act.

Formally invoices among other declarations shall contain the following information:

• the date of issue,
• a sequential number, which uniquely identifies the invoice,
• the tax number under which the taxable person supplied the goods or services,
• the tax number under which the customer received a supply, goods or services in respect of which he is liable for payment of VAT, or for whom a supply of goods was received as referred to in Section 89 (reverse charge),
• the full name and address of the supplier of the goods or services as well as of the customer receiving the goods or services,
• the description of the goods supplied, and – at the discretion of the taxable person required to issue the invoice,
• the relevant tariff heading used in the VAT Act, furthermore, the quantity of the goods and the description of the services rendered, and – at the discretion of the taxable person required to issue the invoice – the relevant SZJ code, used in this Act, furthermore, the extent and nature of the services rendered, if it can be expressed in some unit of measurement,
• the performance date, if other than the date of issue of the invoice,
• the taxable amount, the unit price of goods exclusive of VAT and the unit price of services exclusive of VAT, if it can be expressed in some unit of measurement, and any discounts or rebates if they are not included in the unit price,
• the VAT rate applied,
• the VAT amount payable, except where, in accordance with VAT Act, such a detail is excluded;
• in the case of an exemption or where the customer receiving the goods or services is liable for payment of VAT, reference to the applicable provision of law, or any other reference indicating that the supply of goods or services is: exempt, or subject to the reverse charge procedure where the customer is liable for payment of VAT;

Dates on Hungarian invoices

Beside the above mentioned issues it is very important to handle correctly the dates on the invoices. Usually these dates should be taken on the invoices:

• Performance date: the date when the activity was performed or the goods were handled.
• Issuing date: the date when the invoice is prepared
• Due (payment) date: for the deadline of the payment period.

In case of invoicing a period it is very complicated to find out the performance date. The calculator on our main page can help you in this issue, which you can try here.

The issuing date of the invoices must be sense (the accepted period is 15 days after the performance date). In case of delays the company can be fined.

Invoicing method

In Hungary it is strictly forbidden to issue invoices from word, excel, and other office programs. Also it is forbidden to use foreign software developer’s invoicing program if they don’t have a version adapted for the Hungarian taxation rules and audited by the Hungarian tax office.

Basically companies can choose from 2 different types of invoicing. The first possibly to issue invoices in a booklet. These booklets can be purchased in office supply shops and must be filled out without leaving any blank issue. A register must be leaded that contains the purchasing dates, the starting and closing dates referring to the booklets. These must be retained for 8 years for tax control purposes.

The other possibility is to issue invoices by an invoicing software. These software’s must fit several requirements, especially:

• sequential numbers must follow each other without omission,
• must be available all containment on a range of borders in xml (tax control function)
• the name, purchase date, developer of the software must be reported at the tax office

A new regulation will be introduced from the 01.07.2018, when all invoicing software has to be connected to the tax office, so the tax office will see and register all invoices in real time. In case of paper-based booklets a form will be used to report all invoices in 5 days and even 1 day invoices with more than 100.000,- HUF VAT.

Solutions for the invoicing problems

Our accountancy office can investigate if your company’s invoicing method fits the Hungarian requirements or not. In case we find that your system is not allowed to use in Hungary, then we can suggest the following possibilities:

• We can suggest some easy-to-use softwares with English surface.
• We can offer our Invoicing service that is fully in accordance with the Hungarian VAT law and other requirements. In this case we take over the responsibility of the containment (not the real performance) you can get more information about it  here.