Our Belgian government has decided that all invoices B2B should be sent over the PEPPOL network.
As we rely on a self-hosted ERPNext v14 for all our planning and administration, I need to figure out how to handle this. I’ve searched the forum and found a lot of info about the Indian e-invoicing implementation. Besides that, I’ve found a few German, Swiss, and Austrian posts, but looking specifically for PEPPOL does not return any valuable information.
Is there someone who could get me started to integrate e-invoicing by PEPPOL to ERPNext v14?
The language used and the aspects not expressed could suggest that it started as a government procurement digitization instigation, but is meant to mission creep into the whole economy, even beyond EU territory, complete with new “governance” bodies, digital “authorities”, certifications and whatnot to get people to voluntarily use it.
To illustrate, here’s an excerpt from the current german wikipedia article:
“Deutschland: „Der IT-Planungsrat verpflichtet Bund und Länder, mit Ablauf der Umsetzungsfrist der Richtlinie 2014/55/EU mindestens PEPPOL anzubieten, wenn sie einen Webservice zur Einlieferung von elektronischen Rechnungen zur Verfügung stellen.“[30] Die gesetzlichen Vorgaben verpflichten die öffentliche Verwaltung in Deutschland, E-Rechnungen ab dem 27. November 2018 zu empfangen und zu verarbeiten. Die Koordinierungsstelle für IT Standards (KoSIT) ist im Auftrag des IT-Planungsrats als PEPPOL Authority für Deutschland im PEPPOL-Netzwerk tätig.”
It seems to have started as a B2Gov, but these B’s might be required to have subcontractors also integrate this “network”. So that could be a big number of B entities and subentities for a start.
Is this already outdated or does it reflect the current situation?
Are businesses required to use an open data exchange format?
Or are they even required to do ALL their B2B, even if without any government procurement link, over a centralized API w/ servers, etc.?
The latter would sound like some kind of power grab, wouldn’t it? Not exactly typical for democracy and free enterprise, so I’d be astonished if this were the case.
The Belgian government has taken the decision that all B2B invoices should be sent via PEPPOL. They also make no bones about the fact that this is an obligation to minimise the discrepancy between the VAT received and the VAT that may effectively be charged. So you are correct that this is a way of gaining total control.
Of course, no one is talking about the cost of aligning all systems with this new law. Let alone the additional costs that may have to be incurred to intermediaries, and time for in-house staff training.
I don’t want to turn this post into a rant, but so I want to look for a solution. I am sure it is possible to meet the requirements through ERPNext. I fear I will need quite a bit of help from the community, though.
After all, it’s more like an add-on to invoicing (which has to conform to certain standards anyway), and then some API to a financial authorities’ server, which also needs configuration and some crypto keys which need to be properly secured in the ERP system.
Or maybe on some other communication system, for instance if your governmant does prescribe some special hardware box or so (like they do in the german health system where doctor cabinets are required to get such a system – see KIM | gematik, in german – for communication purposes; these boxen have their own security and privacy issues, unfortunately, although they are pushed with publicity claiming to solve such problems).
Peppol has been requested as an extension of the eu_einvoice app by multiple companies and could be crowdfunded, like the rest of this app. I think it would be a natural fit. However, the timeline is not certain yet. We’re currently just getting started with e-invoicing and Peppol could be a second step once that is stable.
I just got a reply from @rmeyer at ALYF, the company behind the eu_einvoice app.
I was asking for the cost to adapt their application to make it work for Peppol UBL XML, but as he pointed out, the price would be a bit too much for one small company to bear.
So maybe this adaptation should be crowdfunded indeed…
Shout-out to Belgian users of ERPNext. I presume we are all in the same boat, as we need to be able to invoice and receive invoices in the XML format by 01/01/2026.
Who would be interested in a joint effort to tackle this?
I’m currently facing the same issue when trying to migrate my business activities and those of my partners to ERPNext and the Frappe suite of applications. There is a clear interest in making the switch, however, if I understood the discussion correctly, electronic invoicing via the Peppol network and the UBL format are not yet supported at this point?
@pedro_vde do you know how this could be handled in practice? I believe einvoicing has submitted a request to Peppol? Would an API integration with an already authorized tool like Billit.eu be a feasible option? If so, perhaps we could look into it together.
Currently, I have no solution yet as the eu_invoice app is not working for Peppol due to an incompatible format of the XML files. I’m talking to a company that has an application using the right format but I did not hear from them in the last few weeks.
As I want to be ready for the obliged delivery and receipt of XML’s over Peppol by January 2026, I would be glad to look in this together.
What I do know is that accessing the Peppol network always goes by an intermediate and most of them are happy to help out with an API to make the connection.
In the meantime, our ERPNext self-hosted setup is upgraded to v15, but currently, there is no solution for the Peppol integration (yet).
The good news is that we are in discussions with the team at @prilk-consulting in the Netherlands. They were working on a local solution, but they would be happy to develop an application that could serve all European countries, as we all need to access Peppol in the long term.
If someone with a business in Belgium or Luxembourg - or even in the rest of Europe - is interested in being a part of this development, please do not hesitate to contact me by DM.
It is not easy to find out which companies or self-employed people use ERPNext in Belgium. If you or your company are located in Belgium, please let me know.
The more interested parties, the faster the solution can come.