Experiences of large companies with KSeF
During our recent webinar, KSeF: Experiences from Large Companies and Lessons for SMEs Before the April Launch , held on March 19th, we discussed entrepreneurs’ initial experiences with the mandatory KSeF. In most cases, they identified challenges that can be grouped into the following categories:
- problems related to the functioning of the KSeF itself,
- problems resulting from the operation of internal accounting and financial systems,
- problems in cooperation with contractors,
- problems related to the costs of implementing KSeF.
In the rest of the article we will focus on the first two areas.
Problems with KSeF
One of the first, and quite widely discussed, problems with the KSeF system was a trusted profile failure. Many people who attempted to log in to KSeF via this channel in early February encountered an error message. It’s important to remember that a trusted profile failure is not a KSeF failure – taxpayers should authenticate in the system using a different method and issue structured invoices.
In practice, it also turned out that the introduced invoice limit (1MB) is too low for documents containing multiple items, forcing taxpayers to split invoices into smaller ones and resulting in their contractors receiving more documents than before the KSeF came into effect . The Ministry’s proposed solution of individually increasing this limit does not work because… the Ministry of Finance takes a long time to review the application, only to ultimately deny the increase. The situation is similar with approval for structured attachments. Sometimes, despite the formal three-day deadline for a decision, the Ministry delays longer or fails to issue one.
Businesses also complain that they must maintain multiple invoice collection channels, which, despite the promised automation, adds workload to purchasing teams. Taxpayers are also concerned about the security of data entered into the National Tax and Financial Information System (KSeF) and are not entirely convinced by the Ministry of Finance’s assurances that everything is stored on servers in Poland and is secure.
Problems with accounting and financial systems
The most frequently reported problem with accounting and financial systems was the visualization of structured invoices. Businesses indicate that their systems generate visualizations incorrectly , which complicates XML decoding and creates additional work for accounting teams. It is also difficult to visualize all invoices manually via the Taxpayer Application, although this could solve the problem of irregularities. It should be noted that while using incorrect visualizations for internal purposes should not pose any risk, it is recommended to correct errors before sending them to the customer . The Ministry of Finance clearly states that visualizations should generally reflect XML.
Another frequently raised issue is so-called “invisible” invoices, issued by a taxpayer with a KSeF number assigned but not appearing in the buyer’s KSeF account. Technical issues related to integrating internal systems with KSeF or generating correct QR codes are among the fundamental challenges faced by entrepreneurs, requiring significant work and extensive preparation.
Summary
The first few months of KSeF’s operation have shown that the greatest challenges are both systemic and operational. On the one hand, entrepreneurs are grappling with the limitations and imperfections of the system itself, and on the other, with the need to adapt their own tools and processes to the new reality.
In the next post we will take a closer look at the remaining problems mentioned above.
