Fiscalization 2.0 is one of the biggest changes to Croatian business in years, and it mirrors a wider European trend: paper and PDF invoices between businesses are heading into history, replaced by structured e-invoices that travel directly from system to system. VAT payers in Croatia are already issuing them, and from 1 January 2027 the issuing obligation extends to other business entities, while the obligation to receive them is already in force.
What an e-invoice is, and isn't
First and most important: a PDF sent by email is not an e-invoice. An e-invoice is a structured XML file following the European standard, exchanged and read by software automatically, no re-typing, no scanning, no "could you please resend". Exchange runs through access-point intermediaries, and invoice data is simultaneously reported to the tax authority.
For companies, the long-term result is less manual work and fewer errors. The short-term result. Technical preparation is needed.
Three questions for your company
First: what do you issue invoices with? If you use modern business software or one of the established invoicing services, there's a good chance e-invoice support is already there or on its way. If you make invoices in Word or Excel. It's time for a change, because that simply doesn't work with e-invoicing.
Second: how do you receive invoices? The obligation to receive e-invoices is already in force in Croatia. That means registered access through an intermediary and a tidy internal process: who sees the invoice, who approves it, where it gets stored.
Third: where does it all get archived? Electronic invoices must be kept in their original electronic form, for years. That raises questions which are really IT questions: reliable storage, backups, access control, and the ability to find an invoice five years from now.
The opportunity hidden in the obligation
It's easy to see this as just another imposition. But companies that use the transition wisely will tidy up things they've swept under the rug for years: standardising the invoicing process, connecting invoicing with the rest of their business software, and finally sorting out a digital archive. Manually re-typing invoices into the accounting system, the job nobody loves, practically disappears with e-invoicing.
The best time to prepare was last year. The second best is now, while the transition can still be done in a planned way: not in December 2026, in a scramble with everyone else who waited until the last minute.