Where to find your Italian e-invoices, as a private person or a business
Where your Italian e-invoices are: in the Fatture e Corrispettivi portal of the Revenue Agency, in your PEC or in the software of your recipient code, and what to do when an invoice is missing.
Where an e-invoice goes
Every Italian e-invoice goes through the Exchange System (SdI, Sistema di Interscambio) of the Italian Revenue Agency (Agenzia delle Entrate). The SdI delivers it to the channel given for the recipient and keeps a copy, which the recipient finds again in their reserved area. That is why you usually look for an invoice in two places: where it is delivered to you (PEC, invoicing software) and in the Fatture e Corrispettivi portal.
As a private person
Whoever issues you an e-invoice must also give you a copy, on paper, by email or as a PDF, and tell you that the original is available in your reserved area at the Revenue Agency. The copy is enough to read the invoice; you find the original XML file like this:
- Log in to the reserved area of the Revenue Agency's website with SPID, CIE or CNS (the Italian digital identity, electronic ID card or national services card).
- Open the Fatture e Corrispettivi portal and go to the Consultazione section.
- Among the received invoices, look for the one you need by date or supplier and download the file.
The invoices are only visible if you have joined the service for consulting e-invoices (“adesione al servizio di consultazione”): you do this once, in the same portal. Invoices from a period in which you had not joined may not be available.
Many people look for them in the tax drawer (“cassetto fiscale”): it holds returns, payments and other tax data, but the files of the e-invoices are in Fatture e Corrispettivi, in the same reserved area.
With an Italian VAT number
Companies, professionals and flat-rate taxpayers (“forfettari”) receive the invoice on the channel they gave to the supplier or registered with the Revenue Agency:
- Recipient code (“codice destinatario”, seven characters): the invoice goes to the invoicing software or the service provider the code belongs to, for example your accountant's. You find it there, not in your email.
- PEC (certified email): the invoice arrives as a message from the SdI in your PEC mailbox. Attached are the invoice
file (
.xmlor, if signed,.xml.p7m) and a metadata file with_MT_in its name, which describes the transmission but is not the invoice. - No channel (code
0000000without a PEC) or a failed delivery: the invoice doesn't reach you, but the SdI makes it available in your reserved area, in Fatture e Corrispettivi.
If you registered a delivery address (“indirizzo telematico”, a recipient code or a PEC) in the portal, the SdI delivers every invoice there, even when the supplier wrote another code. If invoices arrive somewhere you don't expect, check this registration first.
In any case, issued and received invoices are also in Fatture e Corrispettivi, under Consultazione, if you have joined the consultation service. Your accountant or another intermediary can access them with your delegation.
If an invoice is missing
- Ask the supplier whether they sent it and whether the SdI accepted it: a rejected invoice is not delivered to anyone (the reasons are in the guide to the SdI rejection codes).
- Check the channel: a wrong recipient code, or one of an old software, sends the invoice elsewhere.
- Search the portal by issue date and by date received: the two can fall in different months.
All invoices at once
To download the invoices of a whole quarter, the portal offers the bulk download (“download massivo”): how to request it is explained in the guide to the bulk download of invoices, and the ZIP files you get can all go into one Excel file.
Found the file: how to open it
The file of an e-invoice is an XML meant for software, often signed as .xml.p7m. To read and print it:
- a
.p7mfile: how to open a .p7m file; - the free ways to view it, from the portal to the stylesheet: e-invoice viewer;
- to keep it as a document: e-invoice to PDF.