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The Polish economy has experienced its first months of full, mandatory invoicing within the National e-Invoicing System (KSeF). The numbers are impressive: over 2 million taxpayers have already submitted 340 million documents to the government database. However, analyses from the SmartKSeF system reveal that issuers struggle with document issuance, particularly regarding correction invoices, with nearly 20 percent of them containing structural or logical errors. Exorigo-Upos, referring to the latest data and conclusions from discussions with the Ministry of Finance and Economy, states that it is time for the next stage of evolution. The mere fact that the system works is not enough; its throughput, performance, flexibility in responding to unplanned situations, and document workflow automation are crucial.
The initial period of full KSeF operation has exposed IT infrastructure bottlenecks that directly impact organizations’ document workflows, posing a threat to financial liquidity. Companies operating on massive data volumes have most severely felt the rigid API throughput limits, file size restrictions, and KSeF’s loose approach to data validation.
“The success of KSeF is not measured by whether the system accepts documents. What matters is how it handles mass processes and taxpayer errors. Today, we clearly see that businesses need to ‘adapt’ to the Ministry’s strict rules. A new logical structure aimed at resolving the reported problems is a prospect for 2027 at the earliest. Therefore, temporary moves that do not require a lengthy legislative path and can be implemented without affecting the existing system are important. It is necessary to increase API throughput, raise limits, and expand the permissible file size. This will allow the government system to adapt to business realities,” says Michał Sosnowski, Business Development Director at Exorigo-Upos.
The Anatomy of Errors
The latest data from Exorigo-Upos’s SmartKSeF program best demonstrate what technological bottlenecks look like in the daily practice of accounting departments. Statistics show that 18 percent of all correction invoices downloaded from the government system contain errors. This simultaneously means that the vast majority, as much as 82.2 percent of correction invoices, are processed flawlessly and do not require launching corrective algorithms. Most often, issuers issue correction invoices in the before-correction and after-correction mode, linking invoice items by row number, which accounts for 58.6 percent of cases. The second most popular scenario is generating a correction by difference/balance (23 percent of transactions). Interestingly, systemic linking of documents based on a unique UUID identifier is still a rarity, occurring in merely half a percent of cases.
The real test for IT tools, however, is a group of slightly over 7 percent of correction invoices which, despite having a complete set of required data, were sent without systemically linking the rows together. In such situations, the items before and after the correction get “lost” in the system. However, up to 2/3 of these errors can be automatically fixed thanks to a smart algorithm linking adjacent rows. But that is not all. A large number of incomplete XML files, affecting approximately 10 percent of all invoices, remains a problem for the operational liquidity of enterprises. In these cases, issuers transmit documents without key information, forcing the system to calculate the missing data on its own. For example, a missing unit price was noted in 3.5 percent of cases, and 2.5 percent of files lacked the total item value. However, situations where entire structures describing a transaction are missing from correction invoices carry the greatest tax risk. In such instances, the software must reconstruct the logic of the entire economic event from scratch to restore consistency in settlement.
Announcement of Changes
In response to these daily business challenges, the government has announced deeper reforms to the system, aiming to transform KSeF from a purely fiscal tool into a commercial data exchange platform. This involves a universal mechanism of so-called business events. It will allow companies to register additional operations around an invoice in KSeF, such as notes for accounting offices or error reports, without any modification to the document’s content itself.
“Event architecture is a milestone that perfectly aligns with how we designed our SmartKSeF system. Thanks to this, operations previously carried out locally, such as an automatic prompt to a supplier about an error in a downloaded invoice, can be transmitted to the contractor directly from the state ecosystem in a standardised, systemic way. During the June talks at the Ministry of Finance and Economy, we also submitted a key postulate from our clients: the introduction of a so-called ‘fourth party’. This refers to the ability to securely grant transaction access to entities that do not appear directly on the invoice but execute business processes around it,” explains Michał Sosnowski.
Entrepreneurs are also facing an evolution in cybersecurity. The Ministry of Finance plans to move away from indefinite authorization tokens in favor of keys valid for a maximum of 365 days, featuring an automatic renewal system. For taxpayers, this means the opportunity to choose the authorisation method that suits them best.
“The grace period is coming to an end. KSeF is becoming the bloodstream of Polish business, and every change in authorisation or operational logic forces an appropriate reaction. Our role as a technology partner is to relieve companies of both regulatory and technological risk. Regardless of changes to KSeF, systems like SmartKSeF must ensure the continuity of background operations, without notice to staff. The winning organisations are those where hardware and IT systems perfectly harmonise with daily operational know-how,” concludes Michał Sosnowski.
Interested in optimising accounting processes in your company? Learn more about our SmartKSeF solution.
