Italian e-invoice viewer

What a FatturaPA XML file is

Since 2019 almost every invoice issued in Italy has been electronic. These are not PDFs: they are XML files in the FatturaPA format, set by the Agenzia delle Entrate (the Italian tax agency), and they pass through its exchange system, the Sistema di Interscambio or SdI, on their way to the customer. They hold everything a paper invoice does, written for accounting software: codes instead of words, amounts with a decimal point, no layout at all. Open one in a text editor and you get a wall of tags.

This page puts it back in order: supplier and customer at the top, then the document details, the lines, the VAT summary and the payment, with dates and amounts written the way you would write them.

Why .xml or .xml.p7m

The file name nearly always follows one pattern: the country code and tax ID of whoever sent it, an underscore and a running number, like IT01234567890_00001.xml. If it ends in .xml.p7m, the file was digitally signed: the signature wraps the XML in an envelope that has to be opened before the invoice can be read. Invoices to the Italian public administration must be signed; between businesses the signature is optional, but plenty of software adds one anyway.

Here the envelope opens by itself, and the invoice row tells you who signed, when, and whether the signature matches the content. Some invoices carry their signature inside the XML instead (this is called XAdES). They read normally, but the page does not check that kind of signature.

The courtesy copy

Many suppliers email a PDF alongside the e-invoice. Italians call it the copia di cortesia, the courtesy copy. It is easy to read but has no legal value, and it does not always arrive. When all you have is the XML, downloaded from the Fatture e Corrispettivi area of the Agenzia delle Entrate website, received by certified email (PEC) or forwarded by your accountant, this page does the same job: it gives you a readable version to look at on screen or save as a PDF.

Keep the XML file anyway. For tax purposes, that is the invoice, not the PDF.

What the page and the PDF show

Supplier and customer with VAT number, tax code, address and tax regime; document type, number, date and total; the description; the lines with quantity, price, discounts and VAT rate; the VAT summary, with the reason for any zero-VAT amount spelled out; withholding tax, stamp duty and pension fund contributions; payment terms with IBAN and due dates; the transmission details. Labels follow the language of the page, so this English page explains an Italian invoice in English.

Attachments inside the XML, often the supplier’s own PDF or a delivery note, download under their own names and are never opened automatically. The PDF is an A4 sheet with the same information: long line tables continue onto the next pages, and a note at the bottom of every page says which file it came from.

Nothing is uploaded

An invoice says a lot: who buys what from whom, for how much, into which account. So everything happens in this browser tab: the file is read from your disk, the .p7m envelope opened and the PDF made in memory. If the PDF is all you need, FatturaPA to PDF puts that button first. To get the document out of any signed file, use Open P7M files, and to combine several PDFs into one, Merge PDF.