Are you reachable on Peppol?
A real lookup in the Peppol Directory, not a simulation. Your obligations since 1 January 2026, and what to do about the partner who still is not connected.
This applies to you, whatever your size
Receive structured electronic invoices
Every VAT-taxable person established in Belgium, with no turnover threshold and no size tier. The small-business exemption does not release you: a business invoicing only consumers must still be able to receive its Belgian suppliers' invoices.
Your dates
Two questions. Nothing is sent anywhere — the answer is computed in your browser.
What applies to you
Is a business reachable on Peppol?
A real lookup in the Peppol Directory — yours, a customer's, a supplier's. Enter a Belgian enterprise number.
One reservation we cannot lift: two official sources disagree on how complete the directory is. The tax authority states that service providers are contractually required to register the enterprise number; the Belgian OpenPeppol wiki says only participants who asked are listed. An absence is a strong signal, never a proof.
The list of software published by the tax authority
It exists, and it helps — but read it for what it is. The tax authority states in writing that appearing on it is neither an assessment nor a certification, and that the list is not exhaustive. Use it to start a conversation with your vendor, not to end one.
A supplier still sending you a PDF
Your right to deduct VAT is preserved — the tax authority says so explicitly. It is the supplier who is exposed, not you. And once they comply, invoices already sent another way need no retroactive catch-up.
What stays out of scope
Sales to consumers, transactions exempt under article 44 of the VAT Code, and any relationship where the counterparty is not VAT-taxable. A taxable person not established in Belgium and without a fixed establishment is likewise exempt, even when registered for Belgian VAT.
The start-up tolerances have expiredThe general tolerance ended on 31 March 2026, the self-billing one on 30 June 2026. Only a case-by-case review remains, to be requested from the tax authority. Worth noting, because the press said otherwise: businesses under the small-business exemption are indeed in scope.
One obligation, five different laws
E-invoicing is being mandated country by country, and the gaps are wider than most groups expect. It is tempting to treat it as one project — pick a network, switch it on everywhere — and that is the assumption that produces rejected invoices in one country while another has not yet asked for anything. The four things that actually differ are the channel, the format, the date, and who is caught by it.
The clearest illustration is that two neighbouring countries can require opposite things. Belgium mandates a network: since January 2026 a domestic B2B invoice travels over Peppol, and the royal decree says so in its own text. Germany mandates a form and no network at all: since January 2025 every business must be able to receive a structured invoice, but the finance ministry is explicit that it may arrive by e-mail. France mandates neither in that sense — it built a state directory and a register of approved platforms, and an invoice must pass through one of them.
Peppol, and why it is not the whole story
Peppol is a shared addressing and transport network for business documents. Rather than each company agreeing a format with each customer, every participant registers an address and exchanges structured invoices through certified access points. An invoice sent over Peppol arrives as data your accounting system can read, not as a PDF someone has to re-type.
Being 'on Peppol' means two things: your identifier resolves to a registered address, and your software can produce and receive the structured format. Many companies discover they have the first without the second, because an integrator registered them during a pilot and nothing was connected afterwards.
What changes from country to country is what that registration is worth. In Belgium it is how you comply. In the Netherlands it is voluntary — nothing in Dutch law requires it, and a Dutch business typically joins because a Belgian or German customer asks. In Germany it is one delivery option among several and carries no legal weight of its own. And in France an entry in the state directory is not something you create yourself: your approved platform declares you, which is precisely why an absent entry is worth checking.
What this means inside Odoo
Odoo acts as a Peppol access point, and it is registered on the French tax authority's list of approved platforms — since 15 April 2026, on the official list published on 19 August 2026, the same list the French tool on this site searches. That covers the two mechanisms that need an intermediary; the German requirement, being a format rather than a channel, is a question of what your invoices contain rather than how they travel.
The work is rarely the connection itself — it is the data behind it: customer records without valid VAT or registration numbers, product lines without the tax mapping the format requires, and journals that were never set up to keep structured invoices for the statutory retention period. A missing tax mapping does not produce a visible error on your side; it produces an invoice rejected at the network level that never reaches your customer.
Our usual sequence is to clean the partner and tax data first, register the addresses second, and only then switch the outbound flow. Doing it in the other order produces a queue no one can unblock at month end — and it tends to surface in the week the obligation starts, which is the worst possible week to discover it.
Yes. The press said otherwise and the tax authority corrected it in its end-of-tolerance notice: businesses under the exemption are indeed covered. There is no turnover threshold.
No. The tax authority states it explicitly: the customer keeps the right to deduct on an invoice issued another way. It is the supplier who is exposed to the fine, not you.
Yes, but the door is narrower than it looks. The royal decree allows another format compliant with the European standard by agreement between the parties — and at the same time requires keeping the technical means to send and receive over Peppol.
A strong signal, not proof. Two official sources disagree on how complete the directory is. When in doubt, ask the business itself.
Not necessarily. The authority writes plainly that appearing on that list is neither a qualitative assessment nor a certification, and that the list is not exhaustive.