What Is Peppol eInvoicing?

This post was originally written and published for IssueWire

Peppol e-invoicing refers to the sending and receiving of invoices through the Peppol network between two organisations who are connected to the network. Invoices are sent digitally to a Peppol Access point that the sender chooses. The access point then validates the sender and the invoice data, identifies the receiver of the invoice and sends the invoice automatically to the access point that the receiver has chosen and is automatically entered into the financial system for processing.

what does peppol stand for?

Peppol is an acronym for Pan-Europeean Public Procurement OnLine, and is a globally recognised standard for sending e-invoices and e-orders used in a number of countries across the world for many years.

why have the australian and new zealand governments adopted the peppol standard?

Australia and New Zealand announced the adoption of the Peppol framework for e-invoicing in February 2019. As part of a number of Digital Economy strategies, the need to have a more effective way for organisations to conduct their business has been a key driver, Peppol has been used in over 38 countries globally, for longer than a decade providing a reliable, secure and easy to adopt method to facilitate e-invoicing.

what is a peppol access point?

A Peppol access point is what your system connects to so it can send and receive information to other businesses access points in the network. Put simply, an access point is like your mobile phone number, it can be provided by any carrier but it is able to send and receive calls and messages to any other carrier all on the same network.

This means that once you are connected to an access point you will be able to send and receive e-invoices or e-orders to any other business that is connected to the network without any extra work.

what is the peppol standard?

To ensure that e-invoices, e-orders and other e-documents can be easily exchanged between businesses there is a need for a common data structure and format. The Peppol Business Interoperability Specifications (BIS) forms the basis for determining the format and structure of Peppol documents based on ISO/IEC 19845 Universal Business Language.

In less technical language this means that the specifications have been created based on well published and globally accepted data formats to ensure that the formats can be adopted by businesses. Fortunately for businesses there are providers, like Valtatech, who can support businesses to translate their existing orders and invoices into the required format.

The specifications have been developed to support a number of different business documents in the procure to pay ecosystem, the business documents are currently within scope across Australia and New Zealand:

• Invoice, credit note and invoice response
• Order and order response
• Advanced Shipping Notice
• Catalogue and catalogue response
• Punchout
• Order agreement
• Self-billing

how can we get started with peppol e-invoicing?

Enabling Peppol e-invoicing for your organisation should be simple, value driven and cost effective. We offer a range of different solutions to get your business ready for Peppol e-invoicing.