To send an invoice through Peppol, create an account with a Peppol Access Point provider. You know your customer's Peppol identification (PEPPOL ID). You provide your provider with the structured electronic invoice. Your provider delivers your e-invoice to your customer's Peppol Access Point. Your client receives your invoice.
The Peppol network is based on the "4 cornerstones" model. Each cornerstone has its own specifications, tasks and responsibilities:
Cornerstone 1 - As supplier create an invoice and deliver this invoice to the Access Point of your organizations.
Cornerstone 2 - Your Access Point receives your invoice and delivers your invoice to your customer's Access Point.
Cornerstone 3 - Your customer's Access Point will receive your invoice and return a receipt to your Access Point.
Cornerstone 4 - Your customer receives your invoice.
As a supplier-shipper, your organization does not need to be registered on the Peppol network.
Your client-receiver will need to be registered on the Peppol network. You can check your customer's registration through this link. If you want to be sure that your customer is registered to receive invoices and credit notes and you know his Peppol ID then you better check the registration through this link.
In addition to exchanging invoices and credit notes, organizations can exchange responses/responses to incoming documents over the network. Read more about this in our blog.
Peppol BIS (Business Interoperability Specification) are a set of technical specifications designed to enable seamless and interoperable document exchange within the Peppol network.
UBL stands for Universal Business Language, a standard language for exchanging electronic documents, such as invoices. It is a file in XML format and has .xml as its file extension.
Through the Peppol network you can, in addition to invoices, also exchange response messages with your customers or your suppliers. There are two types of response messages, namely IMR and MLR.
Hermes is a web application developed on behalf of BOSA. Thanks to Hermes, suppliers can send structured electronic invoices to all their Belgian clients, even those who cannot yet process these electronic invoices automatically.
As the name suggests, a Peppol Access Point is your gateway to the Peppol network. It's a service you purchase from a service provider, such as IxorDocs (a certified Peppol Access Point). By using a certified Peppol Access Point, you can easily and securely send and receive e-invoices to and from any organization connected to the Peppol network, regardless of country or industry.
A Peppol ID is a unique number combination just like your phone number in the telecom network. It consists of a Scheme ID (country code) and Participant ID (organization number). In Belgium mainly the KBO number is used as the organization number, in the Netherlands the KVK number. With this number, your organization can be found in the Peppol network and you can safely and efficiently receive and send e-invoices.
Peppol is a secure, international network that allows companies to exchange electronic documents with anyone registered in the network. Peppol stands for Pan-European Public Procurement On-Line.
E-invoicing is the process of automatically creating, sending, receiving and processing invoices in a structured digital format, such as UBL (Universal Business Language). These digital invoices can be transferred directly and securely from one financial system to another, minimizing human intervention and errors. E-invoicing is increasingly becoming the norm in Europe, governments and European institutions are taking strategic initiatives to encourage e-invoicing.
