Article
Christer Haimi 4 min read
When your Finnish customer asks for an e-invoice
The work is done, but your Finnish customer expects an e-invoice. Find out why this is common in Finland and how to send one directly from Trigon.
Your invoice needs to meet your Finnish customer’s requirements
The work is done and the invoice is ready, but your Finnish customer asks you to send it as an e-invoice. Estonian businesses may encounter this request whether they operate in Finland or supply goods or services to Finnish customers from Estonia. You need to be able to submit the invoice in the way your customer requires.
A new Finnish customer may have different invoicing requirements from your existing customers. Emailing invoices may have worked well with a smaller customer, but it may not fit a larger company’s processes. The practical question is whether you can send the invoice from your own software or need to use the customer’s invoicing portal.
The customer needs to match each incoming invoice to the correct order or project, route it for review and approval, and record it in the accounts. E-invoice data allows some of these steps to be automated. This explains why a customer’s invoicing instructions may specify both how an invoice must be submitted and what information it must contain.
Skanska’s Finnish invoicing instructions, for example, require a reference provided by Skanska to appear on the invoice and in its machine-readable data. Each invoice may cover costs for only one project, and incomplete invoices are returned to the sender. The invoice therefore needs to include the information the customer requires to match it to the relevant order or project. Sending an e-invoice and making sure its contents are correct are separate parts of the process.
E-invoicing is common practice among Finnish businesses
According to a 2026 overview by Finland’s State Treasury, Valtiokonttori, e-invoices accounted for an estimated 92% of invoices exchanged between organisations in 2024. The same overview estimates that 50–60% of Finnish businesses have an e-invoicing address and notes that adoption is higher among larger companies. These figures measure different things. The first is the share of invoices sent as e-invoices; the second is the share of businesses with an e-invoicing address. Because invoice volumes vary between businesses, e-invoices can account for a large share of all invoices even when not every business has an e-invoicing address.
Valtiokonttori’s 2025 e-invoicing report, published in 2026, puts public administration’s share of all invoices exchanged between organisations at approximately 7%. E-invoicing therefore extends far beyond transactions with the public sector. Estonian suppliers serving private businesses in Finland should also expect many customers to ask for e-invoices as a matter of routine.
Kesko’s 2026 invoicing instructions, for example, direct suppliers to send e-invoices to its group companies and store operators. Suppliers who cannot send expense invoices to Kesko Group companies as e-invoices are asked to use a dedicated invoicing portal. The customer’s instructions determine how an invoice should be submitted, even if the supplier’s own software cannot send e-invoices.
It is therefore worth considering e-invoicing when you start working with a Finnish customer. If invoices need to be re-entered from your own software into the customer’s portal, assess the time involved across a full year. For example, if re-entering one invoice takes three minutes, 20 invoices a month add up to 12 hours of extra work a year. This gives you a practical way to assess the value of sending invoices directly from your own software.
Send e-invoices to Finland directly from Trigon
With Trigon, you can create a sales invoice and send it to your Finnish customer as an e-invoice. It stays in the same system you use for accounting and tracking customer payments. You do not need to recreate the invoice in the customer’s portal.
Sending e-invoices to Finland is a paid add-on that you activate separately in Trigon. There is no need to open a separate account or sign a separate contract with the e-invoice delivery provider. You activate the service and send your invoices in Trigon.
Pricing depends on the number of e-invoices you send to Finland each month. You can estimate the cost using your usual invoice volume and compare it with the time you would spend submitting invoices through a separate system. For details on activation and pricing, see Sending e-invoices to Finland from Trigon.