Exporting e-invoices from Light Blue

E-invoice export is currently available in the prerelease version of the Light Blue desktop app. If you’d like to be added to our list of prerelease testers so that you can start using this feature, please contact us via email.

Light Blue’s desktop app can export electronic invoices that comply with the EN 16931 e-invoicing standard and be used to comply with many countries’ e-invoicing requirements. Depending on which country you work in, these e-invoices can either be sent directly to the buyer by you, or uploaded into an e-invoicing network that will send the invoice to the buyer.

What are e-invoices and who needs to use them?

E-invoices are a PDF version of an invoice that contain a machine-readable version of the invoice in a specific format. This XML representation of the invoice follows strict validation rules that are designed to make e-invoices compatible with a wide range of systems. There are overall rules for how the date in e-invoices is formatted, but individual jurisdictions can add extra requirements (e.g. extra information that is only required in a particular country).

E-invoices are required by some EU countries for specific types of transaction. As far as we are aware, requirements for e-invoicing in EU countries only apply to B2B (business-to-business) and B2G (business-to-government) invoicing. B2C invoicing (business-to-consumer, i.e. selling services and products to consumers rather than businesses, such as most wedding and portrait photography) are not affected. You need to check what the requirements are in your jurisdiction.

How to set up e-invoicing in Light Blue

1. Install Light Blue 2026.2 or newer. If you’d like to be added to our list of prerelease testers so that you can start using this feature, please contact us via email.
2. Open the Preferences window.
3. Go to the “Finances” section.
4. Click on the “E-Invoicing” tab.
5. Check the “Show E-Invoicing Features” checkbox.
6. Click the red text that appears to see the setup steps that you need to complete.

How to export an e-invoice from Light Blue

1. Check if the billing contact already has their e-invoicing information set up. This will save you time if you ever need to sent another e-invoice to the same contact.
   • To do this, go to their Contact record and look for the “E-Invoicing” heading. Click the “Edit” button to set their country code and the electronic address to which the e-invoice will be sent.
2. Create a new Sale record and link your billing contact.
   • Your billing contact’s e-invoicing info will be copied to the sale, but if you skipped step 1 then you need to click the “Edit” button next to the “E-Invoicing” heading and provide their country code and electronic address.
3. Add the items that you are invoicing for to the sale.
4. Click the “Create Invoice” button.
5. In the “Output To” section, select “PDF”. Check the “Include E-Invoice in PDF” checkbox, then click the “Save” button and choose a location to save the e-invoice.
6. Light Blue will validate the contents of the invoice. If there are any issues that might prevent it from being accepted by an e-invoicing system, these issues will be displayed at this point and you will need to correct them before you can create an e-invoice for this sale.
7. Depending on which jurisdiction you work in, you can now either upload the exported e-invoice to an e-invoicing network or send it directly to the buyer.

E-invoice validation and required values

E-invoices must meet strict requirements and Light Blue includes a lot of validation steps to ensure that the e-invoices that you export will be accepted by the recipient.

E-invoicing validation requirements vary between countries. If an e-invoice exported from Light Blue is not accepted by the recipient due to a validation issue, please contact us so that we can investigate and resolve this for you.

Setup validation

E-invoicing requires the following details to be set up in the Preferences window in Light Blue:

• The “Account” section:
  • Business name.
• The “General” tab of the “Finances” section:
  • Currency code.
• The “VAT & Sales Tax” tab of the “Finances” section:
  • If you’re charging VAT, you must provide your VAT number.
• The “E-Invoicing” tab of the “Finances” section:
  • Country code. Please let us know if you want us to add more country codes to the list of shortcuts.
  • Your e-invoicing electronic address (e.g. SIREN in France). Please let us know if you need us to add more electronic address types to the menu of allowed types.
  • In France, you must provide your SIREN as the company ID.
  • The default payment method that you want to set for new invoices, picked from the menu of allowed payment methods.
    • If the payment method is set to “Credit Transfer” or “SEPA Credit Transfer”, you must provide your payment details in the “IBAN/Payment Info” field.

Invoice validation

To export an e-invoice for a sale, you must ensure:

• That the sale is for a positive amount (i.e. not a credit note, but we can implement electronic credit notes in future if this is needed in your jurisdiction).
• The sale must use VAT-exclusive prices (i.e. the “Tax Inclusive” checkbox must be un-ticked on this sale).
  • This is required because e-invoices are designed for B2B and B2G invoicing where VAT-exclusive pricing is the norm. E-invoices include strict rules for calculating totals and using VAT-inclusive pricing can introduce rounding errors that cause e-invoices to not pass validation.
• Buyer country code. Please let us know if you want us to add more country codes to the list of shortcuts.
• Buyer electronic address (e.g. SIREN). Please let us know if you need us to add more electronic address types to the menu of allowed types.
• Payment method, picked from the menu of allowed payment methods.
• In the “References” section, either a “Buyer Reference” or a “Purchase Order”.

How to report an e-invoice validation issue

If you have any problems with exporting an e-invoice from Light Blue, uploading it to an e-invoicing network, or importing it into the recipient’s system, we can investigate this and try to resolve the issue in an update.

To enable us to investigate an e-invoice validation issue, please send us:

1. A screenshot of the validation error.
2. If the validation error prevented you from exporting the e-invoice from Light Blue, send us a screenshot that shows as much detail as possible from the Sale record in Light Blue.
3. If you were able to export the e-invoice from Light Blue and the validation issue occurred elsewhere, send us the e-invoice PDF that you exported from Light Blue.