Lithuania e-invoicing 2028: i.SAF, SABIS and ViDA explained

Lithuania has two invoicing systems in force today and a third on the horizon. VAT payers report their invoice registers to the tax authority through i.SAF, and every invoice to a public-sector buyer goes through SABIS. Mandatory business-to-business e-invoicing from 1 January 2028 has been reported as a national target but was not legislated at the time of writing, and EU-wide digital reporting for cross-border B2B trade starts on 1 July 2030.

This article separates what is law from what is planned, and explains what a business can prepare in its own systems now, without waiting for the final rules.

Three terms that are often confused

The confusion usually comes from treating reporting, delivery and format as the same thing. They are not, and each has its own system in Lithuania.

i.SAF is VMI's subsystem for submitting registers of issued and received VAT invoices. It is a report to the tax authority about invoices, not a way of sending invoices to customers.

SABIS (Sąskaitų administravimo bendroji informacinė sistema) is the shared invoice administration system through which suppliers send invoices to public-sector bodies. It replaced E. sąskaita and is run by the National Centre for Shared Services (NBFC).

E-invoice is an invoice issued, sent and received in a structured data format that software can process automatically. EN 16931 is the European standard that defines the core content of such an invoice. Peppol is an international network and set of specifications for exchanging e-invoices between systems through access points.

What applies today: i.SAF

i.SAF applies to VAT payers, who must submit data on the VAT invoices they issue and receive. VMI's deadline for legal entities is the 20th day of the month after each calendar month. Natural persons file monthly or half-yearly, depending on their VAT declaration period, and empty registers must still be submitted when there were no invoices.

According to the VATupdate country booklet, i.SAF has been mandatory since 1 October 2016 and uses an XML format defined by VMI. For an IT team, this means an accounting or ERP system must be able to export a complete, correct register every month, and the invoice data must already be structured well enough to produce it.

VMI also runs an e-invoice service inside i.SAF. According to VMI, invoices there can be issued by residents carrying out individual activity and received by such residents and by companies registered as VAT payers in Lithuania, provided the recipient has agreed in i.SAF to receive electronic invoices.

What applies today: SABIS for public-sector invoices

Invoices to Lithuanian public-sector bodies must be sent through SABIS. NBFC announced that from 1 July 2024 E. sąskaita became SABIS, that from that date all invoices intended for the public sector must go through it, and that full operation started on 1 September 2024 after a two-month transition.

NBFC states that SABIS supports invoices in the European e-invoicing standard and works in the international Peppol network. The VATupdate booklet adds that public-sector e-invoicing started on 1 July 2017 via E. sąskaita, that from 1 January 2025 invoices under verbal contracts must also go through SABIS, and that formats include Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 and UBL 2.1 based on EN 16931.

If you sell to the public sector, you already need a working route into SABIS: manual entry in the portal, an upload, or an integration through its interface or a Peppol access point.

What is planned: B2B e-invoicing and the 2028 target

B2B e-invoicing between Lithuanian businesses is voluntary today. A national mandate from 1 January 2028 has been reported, based on an EU factsheet, as a target; as of the VATupdate booklet of July 2026 it was not yet legislated in final form, and a national B2B tool was being scoped.

The same booklet reports that the expected model is a so-called five-corner model: invoices exchanged between businesses and reported to the state in parallel. Treat both the date and the model as provisional until the law is adopted.

What is decided at EU level: ViDA

ViDA (VAT in the Digital Age) is the EU package that modernises VAT rules for digital trade, adopted as Council Directive (EU) 2025/516. According to the European Commission, it entered into force on 14 April 2025, and from then member states can introduce mandatory domestic e-invoicing under specific conditions.

The Commission states that digital reporting requirements for cross-border B2B transactions apply from 1 July 2030, and that member states with domestic real-time reporting must align their systems with the EU model by 1 January 2035.

What to prepare in your systems now

The preparation that pays off regardless of the final B2B rules is making invoice data complete, structured and flowing through one place. If your system can produce a correct i.SAF register and a valid structured invoice for SABIS today, adding a B2B channel later is a connector, not a rebuild.

1. Map your invoice fields to EN 16931. Check that every invoice carries the buyer and seller identifiers, VAT codes and rates, line items, currency and payment terms in separate fields, not only in a PDF layout.
2. Clean master data. Company codes, VAT codes, addresses and public-sector buyer identifiers kept in one customer record, validated on entry.
3. One invoicing integration layer. A single service that takes an invoice from your system and sends it where it must go: the i.SAF export, SABIS, a Peppol access point and, later, whatever the B2B rules require.
4. Status tracking and retries. Record whether each invoice was delivered, accepted or rejected, retry on outages, and alert a person on rejection.
5. Numbering and immutability. Gap-free numbering and no edits to issued invoices; corrections go through credit notes.
6. Reconciliation. Check monthly that the i.SAF register, the accounting ledger and what was sent through SABIS agree.
7. An audit log of who created, changed and sent each invoice.

We built immutable invoices with gap-free numbering into the rental back office we run, and the same principles apply to any invoicing system.

How we can help

We connect accounting, ERP, CRM and custom systems so invoice data moves on its own and every step is logged. For e-invoicing that means a mapping to the European standard, an export for i.SAF, a SABIS or Peppol connector, and reconciliation reports.

• Service: integrations, from €3,500
• What we build: integrations and connectors and CRM, ERP and finance systems
• All prices: pricing
• Book a free 30-minute call and bring a sample invoice export from your system.