The Public Revenue Office and ZELS held a training session for eighty representatives of municipalities and public utility companies, in preparation for the rollout of the e-Invoice system. Bills for water, waste collection and other utility services are soon to be issued electronically.

The session presented the system's functionalities and how to use it, including a free web application for access. Participants also raised practical questions - how utility companies will send invoices to citizens, how the municipalities' existing information systems will connect to e-Invoice, and how already-issued qualified electronic certificates will be used.

In the pilot phase, testing runs either through a direct connection or through the web application, and covers creating, receiving, validating, downloading, accepting, rejecting and cancelling an e-invoice. The Revenue Office says testing will be expanded to cover the full processes.

Why the utilities first

The Revenue Office pointed out that public enterprises are among the largest issuers of invoices in the country and that getting them on board early is key to a successful rollout. That is accurate, and the number is bigger than people picture: every household gets several utility bills a month, multiplied by hundreds of thousands of households.

The benefits the administration lists are predictable - less paper, faster processing, easier storage and review of bills, greater transparency of the processes. None of that is in dispute.

What is not said is how this will look for the user who has no email, no certificate and has never opened a web application. In a country with a large share of older residents who pay their bills at the counter and keep the receipts in a drawer, digitalisation is not just a technical question - it is a question of whether the paper bill remains an option or quietly disappears.

Eighty trained representatives from the municipalities is a good start. The training that will be missing is the one for the user, and nobody usually plans that one until the complaints start.