Serbia E-Invoicing: Ongoing Compliance Obligations in 2025

After the phased rollout that began with public-sector suppliers in 2022 and extended to all VAT-registered private-sector entities through 2023, Serbia’s e-invoicing system (Sistem elektronskih faktura, or SEF) is now the default channel for B2B and B2G invoicing. In 2025 the discussion has shifted from whether to use it to how to integrate it properly with ERP and accounting systems.

All entities registered for VAT in Serbia must issue invoices through SEF to other VAT-registered counterparties. The system also supports structured electronic VAT record-keeping (elektronska evidencija PDV), which sits alongside the conventional VAT return. Against Serbia’s 20% standard VAT rate (with 10% reduced), the record-keeping accuracy required by SEF data is now effectively higher than before electronic submission.

The recurring operational issues we see are practical rather than legal. Integration between ERP systems and SEF remains uneven across providers. Timing mismatches between SEF invoice posting and internal accounting close cause reconciliation breakage. Foreign-owned subsidiaries that rely on a central group ERP sometimes struggle to render invoices in the exact SEF-compliant format without a local adapter layer.

The 2025 emphasis for compliance teams should be end-to-end integration and control testing: can every issued SEF invoice be tied back to an accounting entry, and can every VAT record in the electronic evidence be reconciled to both SEF and the VAT return? Entities that pass that test have a materially lower audit exposure than entities where the three data sets do not fully agree.