Businesses hamstrung by e-invoicing not working across borders

Originally from Finland and still a Finnish citizen, I have now lived and run my one-man company in Estonia for 6 years. I must say the change went surprisingly smoothly -- of course, there was a certain amount of bureaucracy involved, but nothing that couldn't happen in your native country.

Business-wise there is one big hurdle, though.

Although my business is registered in Estonia and I'm physically in Estonia, all my clients are in Finland. This means I'm sending all my invoices to Finland.

Both countries are using the euro currency, are members of the EU, have advanced electronic banking systems and operate pretty much in the same way in business. The Single Euro Payment Area (SEPA) has been around for years, and in both countries you can bill your clients electronically -- as long as you're sending the bills within the country. Cross-border e-invoicing is impossible.

I used to circumvent this by sending my bills in PDF format by email, but now more and more clients have outsourced their financial administration, and the outsourcing partners do not accept PDF files.

Now I have to print out the invoice on paper, put it in an envelope, stamp the envelope and physically take it to the nearest mailbox. This effectively sets the whole invoicing process back some 200 years.

My company has a business bank account in Finland for the convenience of my clients (amazingly, it was possible even though the company is registered in another country). This, however, does not enable my company to e-invoice in Finland, because a Finnish Business ID number is required for the process. You guessed it, an ID number will not be given to a company registered in a foreign country.

When a Finnish client pays the bill to the Finnish bank account, the problems are not over yet. For some unfathomable reason it takes THREE banking days to transfer the money from my company's Finnish bank account to its Estonian bank account. If there happens to be a weekend or public holiday during those three banking days, I'm practically deprived of the use of my own money for the best part of a week.

This is totally unacceptable. I fail to understand why, given that the technological framework has existed for years, an international bank transfer could not happen within the about 10 minutes it does domestically.