Peppol. Access points. Structured electronic invoices. EDI.
If you put those terms together, it sounds like you need an IT project with a project manager, three consultants, and a solid plan.
If you use Odoo, the reality is much simpler.
Odoo supports Peppol by default and acts as a Peppol access point itself. From the same environment where you manage your accounting, you can send customer invoices via Peppol and receive supplier invoices via Peppol.
No separate invoicing software. No separate Peppol connection that you first need to have developed.
And you also don't have to wait until the government forces you to start.
The Netherlands is going to make e-invoicing mandatory
In the Netherlands, structured electronic invoicing between companies is currently not generally mandatory.
That is going to change.
The cabinet wants to make electronic invoicing mandatory for business transactions between companies starting July 1, 2030. This applies to cross-border transactions within the EU, and the cabinet has chosen to implement the same obligation for domestic B2B transactions.
The bill still needs to be further developed and go through the legislative process. It is therefore important not to write as if Dutch law is already final.
The direction is, however, clear.
Belgium has already taken the lead. There, Belgian VAT-registered businesses have been required to use structured electronic invoices for the relevant B2B transactions since January 1, 2026. A pdf sent by email does not count as a structured electronic invoice.
The Netherlands has a bit more time.
But if you use Odoo, I actually see little reason to wait until 2030.
Not because you want to comply with future regulations in advance, but because Peppol can already improve the invoicing process.
A pdf is digital, but not yet a real e-invoice.
This difference is important.
Many companies say they are already invoicing electronically because they email a pdf from their accounting.
That is digital invoicing, but not the same as a structured electronic invoice.
A pdf is primarily made to be read by a human. You see a supplier, invoice number, date, lines, VAT, and total amount.
The recipient's system primarily sees a document.
That is why we use OCR and document recognition. Software tries to extract the information from the pdf and convert it back into usable data.
That works quite well by now. But if you think about it, it remains a strange intermediate step.
System A already has all invoice data as data.
Then we create a pdf from that.
We send that to system B.
And system B then tries to translate that pdf back into data.
With Peppol, you skip a large part of that detour.
What is Peppol?
Peppol is an international network for the standardized exchange of electronic business documents.
So it is not an accounting package and also not a large central database where all invoices from Europe end up.
Companies and organizations connect via so-called access points. These access points ensure that documents can be exchanged securely and according to agreed standards between sender and receiver.
You can somewhat compare it to email.
When you email someone, you don't need to know which mail server that person uses. The infrastructure ensures that the message reaches the right recipient.
Peppol does something similar for structured business documents.
However, with an invoice, it is not about a message that is primarily intended for people. The receiving software system gets structured information that it can process directly.
That suddenly makes automation a lot more logical.
Odoo is itself a Peppol access point.
This is the point where Peppol becomes interesting for Odoo users.
You don't first have to look for a separate Peppol provider and then build a connection between Odoo and that provider.
Odoo acts as a Peppol access point and as a Service Metadata Publisher, or SMP.
The latter sounds more technical than you need to make it as a user. The SMP is part of the infrastructure that determines where a participant can be reached and which documents that participant can receive within the Peppol network.
In Odoo, you configure electronic invoicing from the accounting module. You register your business for Peppol with the correct company details and specify where received documents should go.
After that, Peppol becomes part of your normal invoicing process.
We consider that an important advantage of Odoo. We always try to first look at what is available as standard during implementations before adding extra software or custom solutions.
For Peppol, this is very clear: if Odoo can do it as standard, why would you put an extra system in between?
You can find more about the financial possibilities on our page about Odoo Accounting.
You can already use Peppol today
The Dutch obligation has only been announced for 2030.
But you can use Peppol today.
If your company and the party you are invoicing are both connected to Peppol, the systems can already exchange electronic invoices directly.
This also applies to two companies that both use Odoo.
Suppose supplier A uses Odoo and customer B does too.
Both companies have activated Peppol in Odoo.
The supplier creates their invoice as they normally do. Then Odoo sends the electronic invoice via Peppol. The document is sent through the network to the customer's access point and becomes directly available for processing there.
Do not retrieve pdf from a mailbox.
Do not recognize invoice number.
Do not retype amount.
No discussion about which mailbox the invoice was supposed to go to.
But there is another important point: both companies do not have to use Odoo at all.
That is precisely the strength of a standard like Peppol.
You can use Odoo while your supplier or customer uses a completely different ERP or accounting package. As long as both systems can communicate via Peppol, the invoice can be exchanged.
How do you know if a company is on Peppol?
For that, there is, among other things, the public Peppol Directory.
There you can search for companies that are published in the directory and see which document types they can receive.
A significant nuance: the directory is not a guaranteed complete overview of every Peppol participant. Publishing a participant in this public directory is not mandatory in all cases.
Not found does not automatically mean: not connected.
Odoo can also check for a contact whether the specified Peppol endpoint is valid on the network.
That is ultimately more relevant than just searching in a public list.
Send customer invoices via Peppol
For those who create the invoice in Odoo, not much needs to change in the process.
A sales order can be delivered and invoiced as you are used to. A separate customer invoice can also simply be created from the accounting.
When sending, Odoo can then deliver the invoice via Peppol.
You can also specify for a customer that Peppol is the preferred method for invoice delivery.
This way, electronic invoicing is not a separate action that someone has to remember every time. It simply becomes part of the process.
In my opinion, that is how automation should work.
Not introducing another extra button, extra portal, or extra work instruction, but making an existing process step smarter.
Receiving supplier invoices is at least as interesting.
A lot of attention around Peppol goes to sending invoices.
I find the receiving side at least as interesting.
In traditional invoice processing, a company receives a pdf. It ends up, for example, on [email protected]. Then the invoice must be recognized, stored, checked, and entered as a supplier invoice in the accounting system.
With Odoo, you can already automate that quite a bit with document recognition.
With Peppol, you take a step further.
Odoo checks several times a day whether new Peppol documents are available. Depending on the setup, a received invoice can be directly imported into the correct purchase journal and created as a draft supplier invoice.
So you start directly with structured information.
After that, of course, your own internal process begins.
Is the supplier correct?
Does the invoice match the purchase order?
Are the amounts correct?
Does someone need to approve the invoice?
Can it be paid?
Peppol does not eliminate those controls and you shouldn't want that.
It mainly removes unnecessary administrative work before those controls begin.
Read more about automating customer invoices, supplier invoices, bank processing, and reconciliation at Odoo Accounting.
Peppol does not directly replace OCR
Does this mean that OCR and document recognition become redundant?
No.
The reality is too messy for that.
You will still have suppliers who do not use Peppol. You receive documents from countries or situations where other standards apply. And various documents come in that are not electronic invoices at all.
Therefore, OCR remains useful.
But if the same invoice information can be directly available as structured data, that is preferred.
I like to compare it to Excel.
Imagine someone can send you an Excel file.
It would be quite cumbersome if that person first prints the Excel file, you scan the printout, and then software tries to convert the table back to Excel.
That is roughly what we have found very normal with pdf invoices for years.
Use the obligation to improve your process
This is the most important message for me.
Do not make Peppol a compliance project.
Of course you will have to comply with the law later. But if that is the only reason to start, you are leaving a large part of the value on the table.
Rather look at the whole process.
How are supplier invoices currently received?
How many actions does someone perform before an invoice is booked?
How do you check that invoice against a purchase order?
Who needs to approve it?
When is an invoice made payable?
How do you send customer invoices?
How often does someone have to follow up on an incorrect email address or missing invoice?
Then Peppol will no longer be a separate technical topic.
It will become part of process optimization.
And that ultimately holds much more profit.
It also fits with why companies choose an integrated ERP system in the first place. Sales, purchasing, inventory, and accounting should not be separate islands that email documents to each other. The information should flow through the process.
In What is Odoo? we explain in more detail why that integration makes an important difference compared to a collection of separate software packages.
The best preparation for 2030 is just to start.
July 1, 2030 still sounds quite far away.
But I wouldn't put Peppol on a list with "to be arranged by then".
If you use Odoo, a large part of the required functionality is already present.
You can activate Peppol now.
You can now send customer invoices electronically.
You can now receive supplier invoices electronically.
And you can already do business with customers and suppliers connected to the network.
That’s why I actually don’t find the upcoming Dutch obligation the most exciting part of the story.
The more interesting part is that we can finally slowly say goodbye to a process where one computer system creates a document so that another computer system can then try to read that document.
Peppol sounds complicated.
But in Odoo, it is surprisingly simple.
And that is a good reason not to look at it only in 2030.
