e-Invoicing in 2026: five working days, not calendar days

From 1 January 2026 the deadline for sending an invoice into Romania's RO e-Factura system is counted in working days, not calendar days. It is a relaxation — but an invoice issued before Easter now has a deadline four days later than you think, and one issued on a Friday, two.

1. How it is counted

Five working days, starting with the first working day after the issue date. The issue date itself does not count; weekends and public holidays are skipped. So an invoice issued on a Saturday has exactly the same deadline as one issued on the Friday before.

2. Two different penalties

Late transmission is a fine by taxpayer size: 5,000–10,000 lei for large, 2,500–5,000 for medium, 1,000–2,500 for everyone else including sole traders.

Not transmitting at all, in B2B, is a fine of 15% of the invoice value — not 15% of the VAT.

Two things most people miss: the fine applies per invoice, not once per inspection, and the usual 50% reduction for paying a contravention quickly does not apply here.

3. The part that costs more than the fine

An invoice that had to go through the system and did not produces no tax effects: the buyer cannot deduct the VAT and the expense is not recognised. And in B2B the recipient can be fined 15% as well, for booking an invoice from a Romanian supplier received any other way.

4. Why the last day is the worst moment

Sending is not "clicked, done": the file goes through a validator, and a rejected invoice is not a late invoice — it is an invoice that was never sent. The common causes are trivial and take two minutes to fix, if you have the time: a wrong tax ID, a missing locality code, a VAT rate that does not match the chosen category.