How to send a Peppol invoice (step by step)

Sending a Peppol invoice isn't like emailing a PDF — but once your account is set up, it's just as fast. Here's the whole sequence.

Step 1 — Register your company as a Peppol participant

Before you can send, your company must exist on the network with a Peppol ID:

• Belgium — enterprise number under scheme 0208 (10 digits, no BE).
• France — SIREN under scheme 0225.
• Other countries have their own scheme codes.

Registration is a one-time step through your Access Point (in some countries it includes a verification/mandate step, so start early).

Step 2 — Make sure the recipient is on Peppol

You send to the customer's Peppol ID, not their email. Your tool looks them up in the Peppol directory. If they're not registered, the send can't complete — so verify first. Ask the customer for their Peppol ID, or search by VAT/enterprise number.

Step 3 — Build a compliant invoice

A Peppol invoice must carry the mandatory fields from EN 16931:

□ Your legal name, address, VAT number (+ enterprise number / SIREN)
□ The buyer's legal name, address, VAT number and Peppol ID
□ A unique, sequential invoice number and issue date
□ Line items: description, quantity, unit price, line total
□ VAT rate + amount per rate, and net / VAT / gross totals
□ Payment details (IBAN/BIC; structured communication where used)

Missing a field is the #1 reason a send is rejected — a good tool blocks you before sending rather than after.

Step 4 — Validate, then send

Your tool converts the invoice to Peppol BIS 3.0 XML, validates it against the rules, and hands it to your Access Point, which delivers it to the recipient's Access Point. You'll get a message/document ID back as proof it left your system.

Step 5 — Track delivery

Peppol confirms sent (accepted onto the network) and, when the recipient's Access Point acknowledges, delivered. Keep an eye on the status; a failed delivery usually means a wrong or unregistered recipient ID.

The three things that make a send fail

1. Recipient not on Peppol — verify the ID first.
2. A missing mandatory field — validate before sending.
3. A malformed identifier — e.g. a Belgian enterprise number with the BE

prefix, or a French SIRET where a SIREN is required.

Where Eurobillr fits

In Eurobillr you register once, then every invoice has a Send via Peppol button. It looks up and verifies the recipient, validates the mandatory fields, sends the structured document, and shows sent/delivered status — with a Preview option to check the exact XML before the first real send. Received invoices land in an inbox you can convert to expenses.

If you can't select a customer yet, you can create one inline from the invoice editor first.