Invoicing customers in the Netherlands

Who do you have to send an invoice to?

You invoice every business you supply, plus legal entities that are not businesses.³ That second group includes associations and foundations, Dutch or foreign.³ Private customers are the exception: you may invoice them, but you are rarely obliged to.³ Two exceptions apply. Some food, tobacco and dental wholesalers must invoice them. So must anyone supplying a new or nearly new means of transport to another EU country.³

This page is about the invoice itself, for businesses established in the Netherlands. It covers what goes on it and when you issue it. It also covers the retention period and what to do when the invoice is wrong. Whether you put Dutch VAT on that invoice is a different decision. Reverse-charged VAT covers when the VAT moves to your customer. Three neighbouring subjects also stay outside this page. Reporting your EU supplies afterwards is the ICP declaration. Selling to private customers elsewhere in the EU falls under the Union scheme. Whether you charge VAT at all under the small business scheme is a separate guide. If Dutch VAT is new to you altogether, start with how VAT works.

Take Ilinca, a freelance UX researcher in Alkmaar. She delivered a €3,400 study to a research institute in Aarhus on 12 September. The invoice is open in front of her and she has filled in nothing yet. We follow it through this guide.

What has to be on the invoice?

Eleven details are mandatory on a standard invoice.¹ They start with the names and addresses of both parties. Next come your VAT identification number and your Chamber of Commerce (KVK) number.¹ Then the invoice date, the invoice number, and what you supplied and how much. Finally the supply date, the amount excluding VAT, the rate that applies and the VAT amount itself.¹

Two of those eleven are easy to mix up. The first is the name. You state the legal name of your business. The second is your number. Your VAT identification number is the one with NL in front, the number you put on invoices and letterhead. Your omzetbelastingnummer, the Belastingdienst correspondence number, is different from that.

The table below bundles all eleven into seven rows. It shows what each one means and where each one tends to go wrong. Lighter rules for some invoices follow right after the table.

What changes when your customer is abroad?

Your invoice gains details and they are not the same for goods as for services. For services to an EU business you show both VAT identification numbers and the words “btw verlegd”, Dutch for VAT reverse-charged.⁶ You may write that phrase in English, German or French instead.⁶ Goods to an EU business are an intra-community supply. For those you show both numbers and a line identifying it.⁷ Write that line in any language you like: “tabel II, onderdeel a, post 6, Wet OB ’68” or “artikel 138, lid 1, Richtlijn 2006/112”.⁷ Do you supply goods to an EU business on a continuous basis? Then you invoice per calendar month.⁷

Both of those start from the same step. You ask your customer for their VAT identification number and you check it before you invoice.⁶ An invalid number is a common reason a cross-border invoice comes back. A customer outside the EU has no EU VAT identification number, so that requirement lapses. Your invoice then follows the Dutch rules, unless the VAT is due in another country.³

Which treatment applies is the prior question. Read reverse-charged VAT before you fill in the VAT line. The table here answers only what the invoice then has to show.

Ilinca's study went to a business in Denmark. It shows her VAT identification number and theirs. It states “btw verlegd”. That phrase takes the place of the rate and the VAT amount.

By when do you have to issue the invoice?

No later than the 15th of the month after the month you delivered.² Not the month you did the paperwork. Not the month your customer pays either.

Ilinca delivered on 12 September. Her deadline is therefore 15 October. She has that whole window whether she invoices on the day or three weeks later.

Missing the deadline costs more than a reprimand, because an unsent invoice eventually stops being collectable.⁸ A business invoice lapses five years after the agreed payment term expires.⁸ The cheaper habit is invoicing in the month you deliver.

When may you issue a simplified invoice?

When the invoice totals €100 or less, or when it corrects an earlier one.⁴ The €100 limit includes VAT.⁴ A simplified invoice then needs only four things: the issue date, your name and address, what you supplied and the VAT or the figures to work it out.⁴ Correcting an invoice adds one more: a reference to the original.⁴

The exclusion list is the part people miss. Every exclusion on it is a cross-border supply. A correction of an excluded supply needs the full set too.⁴

How long do you keep an invoice and in what form?

Seven years, rising to ten for anything relating to immovable property.⁵ Choosing the Union scheme or the Import scheme extends it to ten years for the supplies that fall under them.⁵

The form matters as much as the term. You keep an invoice in the form you sent or received it. So you store a digital invoice digitally, never on paper.⁵ Scanning is allowed on one condition. The scan reproduces the original correctly and completely, authenticity features included.⁵ Meet that and you may let the paper go.⁵

Sending digitally has its own condition. Your customer has to agree to receive invoices that way.² You also have to vouch for the origin, the content and the legibility of what you sent.² True e-invoicing, where accounting software delivers straight into your customer's system, is voluntary between businesses.⁸ It is not voluntary if you supply the Dutch central government. Every government body and contracting authority must be able to receive one.⁸

What happens if the invoice turns out to be wrong?

Your customer loses their right to deduct the VAT on it.⁸ That is why a wrong invoice comes back to you rather than being paid. The cost of a missing field is never only yours.

Correcting one is deliberately easy. You issue a fresh invoice that refers to the original. Keep both, the original and the correction, for the full retention period.⁵

Your invoice numbering deserves a look every quarter. A gap or a repeat is the first thing an inspection finds.¹ Fixing it in the same period is far easier than a year later.

What do you check before your next invoice?

Four questions settle almost every invoice: who, what, when and where. Who exactly is the customer, under their legal name? What did you supply, described so a stranger could tell? When did you deliver, which sets your 15th-of-the-following-month deadline? And where is your customer established, which decides whether you add details to the eleven?

Answer those four and the document writes itself. Ilinca's did. It shows her legal name and the institute's, plus both addresses. Next come both VAT identification numbers and her KVK number. Then a fresh consecutive number, the invoice date and a description of the study. Finally 12 September as the supply date, €3,400 excluding VAT and the words “btw verlegd”.

The part that is genuinely worth outsourcing is what happens after. That work is part of our tax return for the self-employed.