There are three official routes to issuing e-documents. Firms often start with the first and get stuck as volume grows; picking the right one up front avoids a migration cost.
01. The Tax Authority Portal
Free and requires no installation. Invoices are entered one by one, by hand. Reasonable for a firm issuing a few dozen invoices a month; above that, human error and labour cost climb quickly. There's no link to the ERP, so reconciliation is manual.
02. Private Integrator
The intermediary takes on the technical relationship with the tax authority. Your ERP connects to the integrator's API and the rest is their job. Legislative changes are absorbed on the integrator side. The great majority of firms sit here.
03. Direct Integration
The firm connects its own server directly to the tax authority. There's no intermediary fee, but certificate management, legislative tracking and always-on infrastructure become your responsibility. Only sensible for very high volumes with a strong IT team.
04. Cost Breakdown
On the portal, software cost is zero and labour is high. With an integrator there's a per-document fee and low labour. With direct integration the upfront investment is heavy and per-document cost near zero. The crossover usually sits in the tens of thousands of documents a month.
05. Decision Rule
Your monthly document count and the depth of your IT team. Low volume means the portal, medium to high means an integrator, hundreds of thousands a month with your own development team means direct integration.