Lithuania E-Invoicing in 2026: What Small Firms Must Know

As of August 2026, Lithuania has not introduced a general B2B e-invoicing mandate. A small business can still send another Lithuanian company an invoice as a plain PDF, as long as the customer has agreed to receive it that way. The European Commission’s e-invoicing country overview for Lithuania, last checked on 14 August 2025, marks both the B2B and B2C mandate status as “No.” The exception is public-sector customers: structured e-invoicing has been mandatory for them since 1 July 2017, and it runs through the national platform SABIS. On top of that, the EU-level ViDA directive will require a structured format for cross-border B2B transactions with VAT payers in other member states from 1 July 2030. Check your readiness now, but don’t plan around a rumored near-term national mandate that doesn’t exist yet.

Who Are You Actually Invoicing?

Before you test anything, split your invoices into three piles. The rules that apply in 2026 are completely different depending on which pile you’re in.

Domestic B2B

Domestic B2B covers invoices to other Lithuanian companies. Structured e-invoicing isn’t required here. A standard VAT invoice, called a PVM sąskaita faktūra in Lithuanian law, is fine, as long as both sides have agreed to receive it electronically.

B2G: Public-Sector Buyers

B2G covers invoices to public-sector buyers: ministries, municipalities, and agencies running public procurement. This flow has been regulated since 1 July 2017 and runs exclusively through SABIS.

Cross-Border B2B With EU VAT Payers

Cross-border B2B applies when you invoice a VAT payer in another EU member state. Standard VAT rules apply here today, but from 1 July 2030, ViDA requires a structured invoice as the default format.

If your company only falls into the first category, a quick check is simple. Once a public-sector or foreign client enters the picture, each flow needs its own review.

What Does a Quick Readiness Check Look Like?

• Which customers do you serve — only Lithuanian companies, public bodies, or also VAT payers in other EU countries?
• How many invoices do you issue per month, and does that volume actually justify automation?
• What accounting software are you running, and can it export a structured file rather than just a PDF?
• Do you also issue credit or debit notes, and do they go through the same process?
• Who in your company owns invoice creation and sending if the process changes?
• Are you VAT-registered, and from what date?
• Where and in what form do you currently store invoices — paper, email, cloud?
• Have you had, or are you planning to have, a public-sector client?
• Do you buy or sell goods or services from a company in another EU country?

Is Every PDF a Structured E-Invoice?

What EN 16931 Requires

A PDF sent by email is an electronic document, but it isn’t a structured e-invoice. The European e-invoicing standard EN 16931 defines a data model that’s machine-readable: invoice amounts, VAT codes and party identifiers sit in separate fields, not as text printed on a page. That’s what lets software move them into another system without a human retyping anything.

Why a PDF Still Fails the Standard

A PDF carries the same numbers, just formatted for a human to read. Software has to pull them back out using OCR, optical character recognition, essentially text-scanning, and that’s exactly where errors creep in. A PDF can meet every requirement of a VAT invoice perfectly correctly and still fail EN 16931, because the standard demands a different technical structure entirely: a machine-readable file that can move across networks such as Peppol.

A small business can already generate an EN 16931-compliant invoice today, if its accounting software or service provider’s interface supports it. There’s no obligation to do this for domestic B2B in Lithuania yet, but the technical readiness pays off the moment a public-sector client or a cross-border transaction shows up.

What Should You Check Before Testing Any Integration?

Before building any interfaces, pull a handful of real invoices and go through them by hand. Under Article 80 of the VAT Law, an invoice must include at least the issue date, series and number, supplier and buyer identification details, a description of the goods or services, quantity, and VAT data. If any of these currently lives in a free-text field typed by hand, or is missing from the system altogether, it becomes a problem the moment you start exporting data automatically.

Check separately whether the supplier’s and buyer’s identifiers (registration code, VAT number) are correct and consistent on every invoice, whether VAT rates match the transaction type, whether there is a purchase-order or contract reference where the client requires one, and whether credit notes are formatted the same way as sales invoices. Reviewing your last ten invoices will tell you fast whether your data quality can actually support automation.

Is SABIS Optional for Public-Sector Clients?

If any of your customers is a government body, a municipality, or another public procurement authority, SABIS isn’t an alternative channel. It’s the only one allowed. According to the European Commission’s overview, SABIS replaced the earlier eSąskaita system in September 2024, and every public-sector invoice has moved through SABIS exclusively since then. There’s no transition period to fall back on.

SABIS supports three ways to submit invoices: a web portal, API integration with your accounting software, and the Peppol network, the European e-invoicing infrastructure built on access points. If you send a public-sector client a couple of invoices a quarter, manual portal entry is usually enough. If you’re issuing more than that, an API connection or Peppol is worth considering, since it avoids double entry. SABIS is built specifically for public-sector transactions. Regular invoices between Lithuanian companies don’t go through it at all.

Where Does Readiness Usually Slip? VAT, i.SAF, and Archiving

Three things get overlooked in most plans, even though they already apply today.

Consent to Receive Electronic Invoices

An electronic VAT invoice may only be issued if the buyer has given prior consent. That consent can be written, or it can follow from the buyer’s conduct: accepting the invoice, paying it, or recording it in their own books, as VMI’s guidance explains. If you’re currently emailing invoices without ever having agreed this with the client, that’s a formally open question sitting in your process.

Proving Authenticity and Integrity

The supplier has to be able to prove the invoice’s authenticity of origin, integrity of content, and legibility. That can rest on business-process controls that reliably link the invoice to an actual delivery of goods or services, matching the purchase order, delivery note and invoice against each other, for instance, as set out in the same guidance.

Retention and the i.SAF Register

VAT payers must keep registers of invoices issued and received, and retain them for 10 years from the date of issue. The exception is businesses on the small-business VAT scheme, who aren’t required to submit register data through i.SAF. That retention period applies no matter where you store the documents. One relief did arrive for storage abroad: from 1 January 2026, you no longer have to separately notify the tax authority of a storage location outside Lithuania, as long as full access to the data is guaranteed.

Why Does a Small Plan Cover You for 1 July 2030?

It helps to separate what’s already required today from what arrives at EU level by 2030. The ViDA directive, which entered into force on 14 April 2025, lets member states introduce national e-invoicing mandates earlier than that. But that possibility, on its own, doesn’t mean Lithuania has already put a general B2B mandate in place. No specific legislation has been published for that yet. Don’t build your deadlines around a “mandate coming soon” that no official source confirms.

What is certain: member states must adopt and publish the provisions needed to implement ViDA by 30 June 2030 at the latest, generally applying from 1 July 2030. From that date, a structured, EN 16931-based e-invoice becomes the default accounting method for cross-border B2B transactions with VAT payers in other EU countries.

Three different plans, depending on who you invoice:

• If every one of your clients is a Lithuanian company, there’s no need to rush. Watch for Lithuania’s legislature to publish a new national deadline, and revisit this page when it does.
• If you serve the public sector, the obligation is already met through SABIS. Just check whether your current submission method (portal, API, or Peppol) still makes sense for your invoice volume.
• If you sell goods or services to a VAT payer in another EU country, summer 2030 is your real deadline. Find out whether your accounting software can generate an EN 16931-compliant structured invoice, and test it on a handful of transactions well before the obligation kicks in, not in the final week.