NextUp: ANAF wants fiscal control on outdated infrastructure. The Romanian state must postpone the fines for 6 months to have time to prepare

At the moment, ANAF is conducting tests on the time and money of the private sector, NextUp representatives point out.

The business environment requests the Romanian state to postpone the application of fines regarding the RO e-Invoice, until the ANAF infrastructure is functional and stable 99.99%, even if this would entail a postponement of up to six months, reports NextUp, one of the main software companies from Romania, which offer automation solutions for sending invoices to SPVs. The request comes in the context where the ANAF servers are unavailable for hours, days in a row and do not receive the documents sent via e-Invoice by taxpayers.

The NextUp company, which is in direct contact with more than 6,000 entrepreneurs and SMEs throughout the country, impacted by the new changes, submitted an official address to the Ministry of Finance asking the state to meet the taxpayer with a stable infrastructure and a adequate capacity for large volume of documents.

“We requested the Romanian state to postpone the application of the fines regarding the e-Invoice for as long as it will be necessary, even 6 months or until 2025 if necessary, to set up a functional digital infrastructure, not a fragile one as it is now. If it will not solve digitization problems in its backyard, April 1 is not a realistic deadline for applying fines. As a software developer, we have implemented the e-Invoice system in our software, but when the documents are sent to ANAF, the state does not receive them. We, from the private sector, are ready to send the e-Invoice. Moreover, the contractors send the documents on time, but they are not received by the ANAF servers, which are unavailable for hours, and days in a row. Therefore, we ask for this postponement to give the state a chance to prepare and stop doing tests on the backs, time, and money of the private sector. The state is the one that needs time to prepare, the private sector is already ready for e-Invoice”, says Roxana Epure, Managing Partner of NextUp, one of the main software companies in Romania, which automates the e-Invoice system for fast transmission, effortlessly, of documents in SPV.

The business environment has adapted, the state is not ready for e-Invoice

To adapt quickly, to reduce the level of stress caused by the e-Invoice, and to avoid possible fines, most companies in Romania use software that automatically transmits, with a few clicks, the invoices to the SPV. Despite this massive adoption, companies complain that documents do not reach ANAF due to technical problems that persist in the financial institution’s infrastructure.

The state institutions did not prepare for the RO e-Invoice system before it became mandatory for entrepreneurs, although it would have been a normal decision for a good collaboration with the business environment. Because of this, there are significant consequences that entrepreneurs feel in their day-to-day work in the business, points out NextUp. ANAF’s infrastructure and servers are not prepared to digest the enormous amount of information and documents that the private sector is sending at the moment. The degree of adoption of e-Invoices is 30% and under these conditions, the ANAF infrastructure cannot cope with the wave of documents, the servers being blocked for hours every day.

Chaos was also created in the first months of the year because entrepreneurs are not used to having a direct relationship with the state – until now this happened through accountants. With this new approach, according to which the contractor should be in contact with ANAF through the SPV, a lot of terms appeared that needed to be explained before the system was launched to prevent the chaos that was created in the private sector.

“The most common problem is that the ANAF servers are not available. There are indeed details that they fix from one week to the next, from one month to the next, in the SPV, problems that they have solved. However, the only problem that remains constant and which, unfortunately, neither ANAF nor the Ministry of Finance addresses is the problem of infrastructure, which is not available. We cannot transmit information because the servers are not available. Changing the ANAF infrastructure is not a matter that can be solved overnight. The smartest thing would have been to solve it before this system came into operation and became mandatory. Now, given this situation, we see no other solution than for the state to take time to solve these problems and reinstate the obligation to fine, where appropriate, when it is ready, even if it exceeds the deadline of 1 April or the possible new term they have in mind, July 1”, emphasizes Roxana Epure, NextUp Managing Partner.

If the Romanian state decides in this regard, NextUp representatives think that the postponement of the application of sanctions will be done in steps, for a few months, for 3 months, respectively for another 3 months, until the ANAF servers are fully prepared to receive documents.

The NextUp software company previously reported that the RO e-Invoice system has generated the biggest chaos of the last decade in the entrepreneurial environment, with the Romanian state being unprepared to manage the change it imposes and showing incompetence in digitization through the multiple errors of this system. At the same time, the company pointed out that the state is once again failing to develop a good relationship with taxpayers, blaming them for blockages that it created through the rudimentary management of the e-Invoice implementation.

What work and risks taxpayers are subject to

Considered by many entrepreneurs as extra work, sending invoices via e-Invoice takes place instantly with the right software. Manually filling in the data for each invoice on the ANAF website can take up to 10 minutes, depending on the number of lines on the invoice and the user’s ability to fill in the necessary data quickly.

Each sales invoice issued by the taxpayer will have to be uploaded to the SPV. Without software, this is done as follows: for each invoice issued, it is necessary to convert from PDF to XML, then access the SPV and upload the XML to the SPV. The SPV must also be accessed and checked frequently for invoices expected from suppliers – each invoice will need to be downloaded in XML format and then converted to PDF format. This will make the work considerably more difficult, especially since all this arduous process will have to be carried out within 5 days of issuing an invoice, to avoid possible fines. Instead, with the right software like NextUp, invoices are sent to the SPV with one click, in just one second, and are automatically downloaded from the SPV once received from the suppliers.

NextUp is the developer of ERP software that saves entrepreneurs time with red tape, such as e-Invoice. The NextUp software is adapted to local businesses and used mainly in online retail, traditional retail, production, distribution, and services, to automate repetitive activities that consume resources and optimize business processes and forecasts. NextUp has over 6,000 customers, with an average of 5 users per company.