How to Send a Peppol Invoice: A Step-by-Step Guide (2026)

To send a Peppol invoice, you create the invoice as structured data, register a Peppol ID through a certified Access Point, and let that Access Point deliver it across the Peppol network to your customer’s Access Point. You never email a file or connect to your customer’s system directly. This guide covers both ways to do it — the manual provider setup most articles describe, and the faster route using an invoicing app that handles the conversion and sending for you — plus how to confirm an invoice arrived and what to do when one fails.

Sending a Peppol invoice: the essentials

What you need before you can send a Peppol invoice

Before you can send a Peppol invoice, you need three things: an invoice in a structured format, a Peppol ID, and a connection to the network through a certified Access Point. None of them require technical skill on your side, but it helps to know what each one is.

A structured invoice. A Peppol invoice is not a PDF with the data typed inside it. It is a machine-readable file that carries each field — amounts, dates, tax, line items — as separate data the recipient’s system can process without anyone retyping it. If you want the wider picture of where this sits among the different types of invoices, we cover that separately, and the essential invoice elements your invoice still has to contain don’t change.

A Peppol ID. This is your address on the network. It is usually built from your business registration or VAT number — in Belgium, for example, it is your CBE number with the prefix 0208: (so 0208:0999888777). Access Points use it to route invoices to and from you.

A certified Access Point. You cannot plug into Peppol directly. A certified Access Point is the gateway that validates your invoice, converts it to the right format, and moves it across the network. If the term is new, our guide to what Peppol is and how the network works explains the four-corner model in plain English.

How to send a Peppol invoice: the standard route

The standard way to send a Peppol invoice is to sign up with a certified Access Point provider, register your Peppol ID, prepare the invoice in the required format, and transmit it through the provider. This is the route most online guides describe, because most of them are written by Access Point providers. Here is what it actually involves, step by step.

1. Choose a certified Access Point provider. Pick a provider certified by OpenPeppol. Check it covers your country and the document types you send, and confirm how it is priced — some charge per document, others a monthly fee.
2. Register and get your Peppol ID. The provider registers your business on the network and assigns or confirms your Peppol ID. This is also where you are listed so other businesses can find you.
3. Connect your invoicing system. With most standalone providers this is the heavy step. You either upload invoices manually through their portal, or integrate your accounting system through an API — which is where the developer time usually appears.
4. Create the invoice in Peppol BIS Billing 3.0. The invoice has to be produced in the structured format the network requires. A portal may give you a form; an integration generates the file from your system.
5. Validate before sending. The invoice is checked against the rules of the format. Validation catches missing or wrong fields before delivery, so the invoice isn’t rejected at the other end.
6. Transmit. Once validated, the invoice is sent. Your Access Point passes it to your customer’s Access Point, which delivers it into their system.

For a one-off business sending the occasional invoice, steps three and four are where this route gets heavy — a portal means manual entry, and an integration means setup. That is the gap the next section closes.

The easier way: sending from an invoicing app

The simplest way to send a Peppol invoice is from an invoicing app that converts and delivers it for you, with no separate Access Point subscription and no developer. Instead of choosing a provider, integrating a system, and generating files, you create the invoice the way you always have and the app does the Peppol part in the background. Belgium, where the B2B mandate is already live, is the clearest example of how this works in practice.

Here is the same job done inside Billdu’s Peppol e-invoicing for Belgium:

1. Turn on Peppol once. On a Standard or Premium plan, a super-owner or manager activates Peppol in the app. Your CBE number is checked against your business profile first, so invoices don’t fail later, and your Peppol ID is registered in seconds.
2. Create the invoice as usual. You fill in the customer and line items exactly as you would for any invoice — no special format, no XML, no extra fields to learn.
3. Send. The app converts your invoice to Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 and delivers it through its own certified Access Point. There is no separate provider to sign up with.
4. Track and correct. You watch the invoice move through clear statuses, and if it needs fixing, the app issues a compliant e-credit note linked to the original instead of a loose correction.

Invoices to Belgian government bodies travel the same way through Mercurius, and anyone not on Peppol — consumers or non-Belgian clients — still gets a normal PDF, email or link from the same app. If you just want to see the structure first, you can create a professional invoice for free before activating Peppol.

How to know your invoice was delivered

After you send a Peppol invoice, the network reports a status back to you, so you can see whether it was delivered, accepted, refused, or simply viewed. This is one of Peppol’s real advantages over email: you are not left guessing whether an invoice landed.

In an app like Billdu, an invoice moves through a clear sequence — Draft → Sending → Sent → Accepted, Refused or Viewed — with an error shown if delivery fails. Here is what each one means and what to do.

What if your customer isn’t on Peppol?

If your customer is not registered on the Peppol network, you cannot deliver a Peppol invoice to them — they must first register their own Peppol ID through an Access Point. The network can only route to a participant that exists on it, so a missing or wrong Peppol ID is the most common reason a send fails.

The practical move is to check the customer’s Peppol ID before you send, and if they aren’t registered, ask them to set up an Access Point — in mandate countries they are likely required to anyway. In the meantime you can still bill them by PDF or email, and agree clear invoice payment terms so the switch to Peppol doesn’t delay payment.

One honest limitation worth knowing: sending and receiving are separate capabilities. An app may send Peppol invoices but rely on a dedicated receiving Access Point to take them in. Billdu, for instance, sends Peppol invoices itself but currently points users to a certified receiving provider such as B2B Router to receive them. If you need to receive as well as send, confirm how your tool handles the receiving side before you commit.

Common mistakes to avoid

The most common Peppol sending mistakes are using the wrong Peppol ID, skipping validation, and assuming that a sent invoice was automatically received. Each one is easy to avoid once you know to look for it.

• Using the wrong Peppol ID. A single wrong digit means the invoice can’t be routed. Confirm the recipient’s ID before sending.
• Skipping validation. Sending an invoice that doesn’t meet the BIS Billing 3.0 rules gets it refused. Let your tool validate first.
• Confusing “Sent” with “Accepted.” Sent only means it left your Access Point. Wait for Accepted before treating it as delivered.
• Assuming you can also receive. Sending and receiving are different. Check your tool covers the side you need.
• Treating a Peppol invoice like an email. You don’t attach a PDF or send to an email address — you send structured data to a Peppol ID.

Forgetting non-Peppol customers. Consumers and businesses outside the network still need a normal PDF or email. Keep both flows.

Methodology and sources

This guide draws on primary sources for the Peppol standard and the law, verified in May 2026, and on Billdu’s own product documentation for how its app sends Peppol invoices. Mandate dates and thresholds move, so we recheck the authority pages on a fixed cadence and update this article when they change.

• OpenPeppol — network governance, Access Points and BIS Billing 3.0
• EU Directive 2014/55/EU and the EN 16931 standard for electronic invoicing
• European Commission — eInvoicing in Belgium
• FPS BOSA — einvoice.belgium.be (Belgian Peppol authority)
• Billdu — Peppol e-invoicing for Belgium (product capabilities)