Peppol is a secure and closed network for exchanging digital documents, such as e-invoices. It is short for Pan-European Public Procurement Online. Despite the word ‘European’ in the name, Peppol has grown into an international network that reaches far beyond Europe.
Why send invoices using Peppol?
As of 1 January 2026, it will be mandatory in Belgium to send invoices to VAT-registered Belgian customers via Peppol. From then on, it will no longer be allowed to send paper or e-mail invoices to your customers.
Invoices to government or local authorities must already be sent via the Peppol network for a while.
Another advantage of Peppol is that you can be sure that the invoice has been sent on to your customer. The invoice no longer ends up in the mail’s spam folder or gets lost in the mail.
How does Peppol work?
A Peppol Access Point allows you to access the Peppol network and send invoices securely from one Access Point to another.
What is a Peppol Access Point?
To receive invoices through Peppol, a company must be registered with one Peppol Access Point. This cannot be more than one. For sending invoices, this can be done through any Access Point.
Compare this to the way e-mail works: the e-mail you receive belongs to one party such as Gmail, Outlook, Telenet…, but you can send e-mails through several parties and they will be delivered where the e-mail address is registered.
Many accounting programmes or pre-accounting systems register their customer on the Peppol network so they can receive purchase invoices. If you want to change your accounting programme, you are going to have to ask your previous accounting programme to deregister you there so that the new accounting programme can register you on the Peppol network. This is only for invoices you wish to receive. This does not need to be done for invoices you send via the Peppol network.
In Belgium, companies are registered with a particular Peppol Access Point through their company number and possibly VAT number.
Why is it CONVENIENT to have your own Peppol Access Point?
The advantage of being your own Access Point is that you don’t have to pay any fees to a third party and you control everything yourself.
Compare it to how e-mail works: why not be an e-mail provider yourself?
Why is it NOT CONVENIENT to have your own Peppol Access Point?
To be a Peppol Access Point yourself, you need to fulfil some obligations:
- Being a member of OpenPeppol, which is not free of charge
- Depending on which countries you operate in, you must also comply with certain guidelines, such as having a certain ISO standard, but sometimes also forwarding additional data to governments
- You need to create or buy/rent the software to be an Access Point
- Software also needs to be maintained
- You need infrastructure to run this
- …
All these things are only profitable if you have enough customers and people using your Access Point.
Why Scrada?
You can send invoices to Scrada from your programme. Scrada then puts these invoices on the Peppol network, even if your customer does not receive purchase invoices in your programme.
Read all about the Scrada API in the article ‘Why use the Scrada API to send invoices via Peppol to customer and accounting?’.
Using Scrada API?
Get in touch with us. You can test the API for free, we will provide you with the necessary documentation.
