If you sell online, RO e-Factura is no longer an accounting problem — it's an infrastructure problem. From 2026 there is no grace period for any category: B2B, B2C or B2G. And for a store handling ten orders a day, uploading invoices to the tax portal by hand is no longer a reasonable option.
What changed on 1 January 2026
The deadline for submitting to the RO e-Factura system became 5 working days from the invoice issue date, under Emergency Ordinance 89/2025. Until the end of 2025 it was 5 calendar days.
It looks like a relaxation and, on paper, it is. In practice it's a new source of mistakes: the clock starts the day after issue and counts only working days, skipping weekends and public holidays. An invoice issued on 23 December can fall due in January. If you used to count “five days” in your head, the arithmetic is different now.
The part that catches stores out: B2C
Since 1 January 2025 the obligation also covers invoices issued to individuals not registered for VAT. Which is exactly the main flow of an online store.
Many merchants assumed e-Factura only concerned business-to-business. It doesn't. Every order from a private customer generates an invoice that enters the system, with the same 5 working day deadline.
There is good news too: you don't need the customer's national ID number. The first name, last name and delivery address are enough. You don't have to ask at checkout for data the customer doesn't want to give and that you have no reason to store.
“Electronic invoice” does not mean PDF
This is the most expensive confusion we come across. A PDF emailed to the customer is not an electronic invoice in the legal sense, however good it looks.
The required format is XML UBL 2.1, on the CIUS-RO schema — the Romanian extension of the European standard EN 16931. A structured file, read by systems rather than people. The PDF stays useful for the customer, but it's a by-product. The document that counts for the tax authority is the XML.
The fines
For missing the submission deadline, penalties are split by taxpayer category:
- Large taxpayers: 5,000 – 10,000 RON
- Medium taxpayers: 2,500 – 5,000 RON
- Small taxpayers and individuals: 1,000 – 2,500 RON
For a small store, a 1,000 RON fine isn't dramatic on its own. The problem is that a systematic delay — because nobody is tracking the deadline — doesn't stay an isolated incident.
What this actually means for an online store
Up to around ten orders a day you can keep up by hand: issue the invoice, download it, upload it to the tax portal. Above that threshold, someone in the company spends hours every week on an operation that earns nothing.
The answer isn't to put someone on it. It's for the invoice to leave on its own.
The flow that works looks like this: the customer places the order, the invoice is issued automatically through SmartBill, Oblio or FGO, the document reaches the tax portal the same day, and the customer gets the PDF by email. Nobody copies anything from one screen into another.
One important point the platforms don't state loudly: the invoicing provider submits to the tax portal, but the responsibility stays yours if the document doesn't arrive. That's why monitoring matters, not just the integration. A connection that fails silently on a Friday evening becomes a fine if nobody notices until Tuesday.
Four mistakes we see often
- Forgotten credit notes. Returns generate correction invoices, which fall under the same obligation and the same deadline.
- The deadline counted in calendar days. Out of habit from previous years. Only working days count now, and the difference works in your favour — but only if you calculate it correctly.
- An integration set up and never checked. It works flawlessly at launch, breaks three months later on a plugin update, and nobody looks until the first inspection.
- Marketplace orders treated separately. Sales through eMAG or other channels fall under the same obligation as those from your own store.
What this article doesn't tell you
I'm not an accountant, and this text doesn't replace a conversation with yours. The rules have categories, exceptions and particular situations — special VAT regimes, intra-community transactions, simplified invoices — that someone who knows your company should clarify. Check the deadlines and your classification with your accountant before making decisions on them.
What I can guarantee is the technical side: that the flow from order to tax portal works, checks itself, and tells you when something hasn't gone through.
If you want to see how we connect invoicing, couriers and ERP to a store, we've set it out on the ERP, courier and payment integrationspage. And if you're starting from scratch, building the online store includes this from the start, not as an extra.