Invoicing is moving away from paper and PDFs. Peppol (Pan-European Public Procurement Online) is the secure international network behind that shift: your invoice travels machine to machine into your customer’s accounting software, without anyone retyping anything at either end.
If you already work in Invoice Office, switching it on is a handful of toggles. Here is the whole setup, in order.
Why choose Peppol e-invoicing?
- Faster payments. Direct, machine-to-machine transfer removes the manual data entry at the other end — which is usually where an invoice sits waiting.
- Enhanced security. The network is designed for reliable, traceable delivery to the correct recipient, which cuts the room for invoice fraud.
- International reach. Exchange documents with any Peppol-connected business or government body across 35+ countries, so cross-border billing stops being a special case.
- Simplified compliance. Documents follow the evolving e-invoicing standards (such as Peppol BIS) without you having to track the changes yourself.
Step 1 — Enable the Peppol connector
Nothing sends or arrives until the main connector is on.
Open Integration Connectors from the header menu and select Peppol to reach its configuration. On the Connect tab, find the Active toggle at the top and switch it to Yes (green).
Step 2 — Verify your network identifiers
Peppol routes documents by identifier, so two fields have to be right before anything else works:
- VAT / Tax / BCE number — for example
NL863183955B01. Used for tax validation and international routing, and the primary identifier others use to find your business on the network. - CoC number — your Chamber of Commerce (KvK) number, for example
84362766. The secondary identifier for finding your business on the network.
If either field is empty or wrong, click the icon after the label to edit it. They must match your official business registration exactly — a mismatch here is the most common reason documents fail to route.
Step 3 — Send invoices and credit notes
Turning this on lets your account transmit invoices and credit notes straight into your customers’ accounting software over the Peppol network.
- Find the Activate outgoing invoices row and slide the toggle to Yes.
- Track what you have sent on the Outbound tab in the top navigation bar.
Step 4 — Receive purchase invoices
The same in reverse: your suppliers’ accounting software can deliver their invoices directly to you.
- Find the Activate incoming invoices row and slide the toggle to Yes.
- Watch what arrives on the Inbound tab in the top navigation bar.
Step 5 — Enable Peppol for your customers
Your account being connected is only half of it — each recipient has to be identified correctly too. This happens on the customer settings page.
Review the preset identification number. Invoice Office presets it from the data already in the
customer’s general profile, such as their VAT or registration number. Check the number in the field
(for example BE07178229302) is correct, and type over it if it is empty or wrong.
Validate the connection. Click the search / magnifying-glass icon to the right of the number. That runs a real-time check against the Peppol network to confirm the customer is registered to receive e-invoices and that the identifier is valid. Save the customer settings page afterwards.
Worth doing before the first real invoice rather than after: validation tells you straight away whether that customer can actually receive documents this way.
Sending an e-invoice
Create the invoice or credit note as normal. Invoice Office checks whether your account is Peppol-connected, and if it is, Peppol appears as an option in the document’s Send menu. Choose it and the document goes over the network instead of by email.