Belgium from 1 January 2026, France from September 2026, Germany phased in over the coming years: B2B e-invoicing is becoming mandatory in more and more EU countries. As a Dutch company you'll have to deal with it too, especially if you have customers or suppliers across the border. The good news: Odoo has Peppol support built in. The less good news: "built in" doesn't mean "taken care of". This is the practical checklist.
What is Peppol, actually?
Peppol is a European network for exchanging electronic invoices. Not a PDF by email, but a structured file (UBL format) that goes directly from your accounting system to your customer's. Compare it to banking: you don't send a screenshot of a transfer, you send the payment itself. For the recipient that means: no retyping, no scanning errors, faster processing. For the tax authorities in the EU it mainly means: less VAT fraud. Hence the mandate.
Step 1: register with an access point
You send and receive Peppol invoices via a so-called access point. In Odoo 17 and later you can use Odoo itself as the access point, and for most SMEs that's the shortest route. Go to Invoicing → Settings → Electronic Invoicing and start the Peppol registration there. You'll need your Chamber of Commerce (KvK) number and VAT number, and you confirm the registration by SMS or email.
Note: a company can only be registered with one access point at a time for receiving. If you're still with another provider (for example via your old accounting package), you'll need to have that registration cancelled first. This is by far the most common reason a registration gets stuck.
Step 2: get your master data in order
Peppol is strict. An invoice is rejected if the data isn't right, so check before your first invoice:
- Your own company details: Chamber of Commerce (KvK) number, VAT number and address fully filled in under Settings → Companies.
- The correct Peppol address for each customer (in the Netherlands usually the Chamber of Commerce number, in Belgium the enterprise number). Odoo can look up whether a customer is reachable on the network.
- The invoice format: in the sales journals or customer settings, choose Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 as the default.
- VAT settings per product category, because an invoice without a valid VAT code won't pass validation.
Step 3: send test invoices
Don't go live with your biggest customer straight away. First send a test invoice to a party you're on good terms with, or to your own company if it has a second entity. Check whether the invoice arrives, whether all lines are correct and whether the payment reference comes through properly. In Odoo you can see the Peppol status per invoice: sent, delivered or rejected. If it's rejected, the reason is shown — usually a missing field or a wrong code.
Veelgemaakte fouten
From real-world practice, so you don't have to make them yourself:
- Double registration: you're still registered with an old access point and Odoo can't register you.
- Continuing to email PDFs: customers in countries with a mandate will soon simply no longer be allowed to accept those invoices.
- Discounts and surcharges posted incorrectly: a manual line "discount -10%" without the right VAT code is rejected.
- Forgetting incoming invoices: Peppol works both ways. Set up your purchasing process too, so that incoming UBL invoices automatically appear in Odoo as draft bills.
Praktische tip
Don't wait for the deadline in your country or that of your customers. Register your access point now, send your first test invoice this month and iron out the teething problems while nothing depends on it yet. The registration itself takes a quarter of an hour; cleaning up customer data takes more time than you think.
Need help with the setup? Contact DAADit Group, and together we'll make sure your e-invoicing is in place before it has to be.