A Belgian customer emails: “Can you invoice us through Peppol from now on?” Or a German buyer returns your PDF asking for an “XRechnung”. For more and more Dutch businesses that is the moment e-invoicing stops being a policy topic and becomes something that has to be sorted this week. This article explains what is changing, what an e-invoice is and is not, and what you can do today — without replacing your accounting package tomorrow.

An e-invoice is not a PDF

The first misunderstanding: an invoice as a PDF attached to an email is not an e-invoice. An e-invoice is a structured file — usually XML — in which every fact has a fixed place: the invoice number, the parties, each line, VAT per rate, the total. Software reads it without a person looking first. That is the whole point: on the receiving side the invoice is booked, checked and queued for payment automatically.

The European standard for this is EN 16931. It allows two “syntaxes”: UBL (the common one in the Netherlands and Belgium) and CII (which German XRechnung often arrives in). On top of the standard sit national profiles: NLCIUS for the Netherlands, Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 as the European common ground.

What is Peppol?

Peppol is the network those files travel over. Think of email: you do not send straight to your customer’s computer, but through an access point — a provider that delivers your invoice to the recipient’s access point. Every company on the network has an address: in the Netherlands usually the Chamber of Commerce number, in Belgium the enterprise number.

That address decides whether an invoice arrives. A company that is not registered is unreachable — however correct your file. So the first question for every new customer is not “which format?” but “are you on Peppol?”. Our Peppol check answers that in seconds, straight from the network’s own registry.

The timeline

  • Belgium, since 1 January 2026: structured e-invoices between Belgian companies are mandatory, over Peppol. Dutch suppliers fall formally outside that law, but Belgian customers are building their administration around it and expect you to join. In practice, PDFs are processed late or sent back.
  • Germany: companies have had to be able to receive e-invoices since 2025; the obligation to send them is being phased in from 2027. Large German customers are already asking for XRechnung or Peppol.
  • EU, 1 July 2030: under the ViDA rules, e-invoices become the norm for cross-border B2B invoicing within the EU.
  • Netherlands: a national mandate is in preparation. The expectation is a law around 2028 and a B2B obligation in the years after. Government bodies have had to accept e-invoices since 2017.

The conclusion is simple: if you sell to Belgian or German companies you need this now; if you only trade within the Netherlands you have a few years — best spent setting it up calmly and well.

What you can do today

1. Read what you receive. Getting an XML file as an invoice and unable to do anything with it? Drop it into our e-invoice viewer. You see it as a normal invoice, including the embedded PDF and a check that the amounts add up. All in your browser; your invoice data goes nowhere.

2. Check your customers. Run your Belgian and German customers through the Peppol check. Whoever is reachable can receive an e-invoice. Whoever is not needs a separate conversation — better known before you build an integration.

3. Make that one invoice. One customer asking for a UBL file now, while your package cannot produce one yet? With the e-invoice generator you fill in a form and download a Peppol BIS or NLCIUS file, reverse charge for another EU country included. You hand that file to an access point.

When it is time for an integration

A form is fine for a few invoices a month. Once it becomes dozens, you want every invoice leaving your accounting software or web shop to depart as an e-invoice automatically. That is an integration: your package — Exact Online, Moneybird, a web shop — talks straight to an access point, and the Peppol check happens automatically per customer.

Two things we always include, because they go wrong in practice:

  • The customer’s reference. Peppol rejects an invoice without a purchase reference or order number. That field has to be in your process before the invoice is created.
  • The right address. A customer may be registered under their VAT number and not their registration number, or the other way round. An integration that tries only one variant misses customers who are there.

In short

E-invoicing is not a new format for the same process; it is a different process. Invoices are no longer read but processed, and the recipient’s address matters as much as the content. Start by reading, checking and making that one invoice by hand. When it grows, integrate it.

Want to know what an integration costs for your situation? See our pricing or request a free quote.