Selling into Italy? FatturaPA and SDI in plain language
Italy was first to mandate e-invoicing for everyone — including cross-border sellers. Here's what FatturaPA and SDI mean for you, even if you've never set foot there.
Selling into Italy? FatturaPA and SDI in plain language
Italy was the first EU country to mandate structured e-invoicing — for B2G in 2014, for B2B in 2019, and since 2022 for cross-border invoices too. If you sell to Italian businesses from elsewhere in the EU, that last change is the one to know.
The three names you'll see
- SDI — Sistema di Interscambio, the Italian tax authority's clearing
network. Every Italian invoice passes through it.
- FatturaPA — the XML format the invoice travels in.
- Codice Destinatario / PEC — how the recipient is addressed on SDI.
Plain version: SDI is the network, FatturaPA is the language, and the Codice Destinatario is the address. Full background in our Italy guide and the FatturaPA glossary entry.
How the cross-border rule works
Since 1 July 2022, Italian businesses must declare cross-border transactions (incoming and outgoing) by sending FatturaPA XML through SDI. The old quarterly summary (esterometro) is gone.
In practice this means: when you invoice an Italian B2B customer from abroad, your customer's accounting system expects to receive a FatturaPA through SDI — not a PDF in their inbox. They use the XXXXXXX code (seven X's) on their side to mark a non-resident counterparty, and you issue an invoice they can route into SDI.
What that changes for you
- You can't just email a PDF anymore. Even a perfectly valid PDF
leaves your Italian customer with a manual job — re-keying it into SDI themselves with the XXXXXXX code.
- You need a way to issue structured invoices. That can be PEPPOL BIS
(with Italian recipients reachable via PEPPOL → SDI bridging) or directly producing the FatturaPA your customer hands to SDI.
- Routing matters. Italian B2B recipients have either a 7-character
Codice Destinatario or a PEC (certified email). Get this wrong and the invoice doesn't land.
Natura codes (the Italian VAT twist)
Italian invoices use Natura codes (N1, N2.1, N2.2, …) to label exemptions and special VAT modes like reverse charge — they're how Italy marks what your invoice line is, fiscally. For an intra-EU B2B service to an Italian client, the Natura is typically N6.x (reverse charge); for an intra-community supply of goods, N3.2.
If that sounds fiddly, it is — and it's exactly the kind of mapping the software should do for you. Eurobillr derives the right Natura code from the tax mode you pick on the line.
What Eurobillr handles
- FatturaPA v1.2.2 (FPR12 for B2B, FPA12 for B2G).
- SDI submission with status tracking and ricevute (delivery
receipts).
- Natura code mapping from your invoice's VAT mode.
- Codice Destinatario / PEC routing.
Full detail on Italy is in the country guide; to check whether a specific Italian counterparty can already receive a structured invoice, paste their VAT number into the free PEPPOL lookup.
The Italian SDI rules predate every other EU mandate by years — so what's about to roll out in Belgium, Germany and France looks a lot like a more flexible version of what Italy has been doing since 2019. Getting comfortable here is good practice for everywhere else too.