E-invoicing in Belgium: Peppol between businesses

Belgium has required e-invoicing between businesses since 1 January 2026, and Peppol is the route the invoices are sent through. If you have Belgian customers or suppliers, an invoice as a PDF by email can no longer be your only way of sending. The article explains what Peppol is, how it fits with Business Central, and what you should check with the Belgian authority before you send the first invoice.

What the requirement is

The dates in this article are as the rules stood in October 2026. The requirement in Belgium has applied since 1 January 2026. Check the Belgian finance authority, FPS Finance, for the current wording, including who is covered and which exceptions exist. The article is not legal advice.

The point for a company outside Belgium is simple: if you sell to a Belgian business, the customer can expect a structured invoice that can be processed automatically. If you buy from Belgian suppliers, you must be able to receive them.

Peppol in brief

Peppol is a network for exchanging electronic documents. You do not send directly to the recipient. You send to an access point, which forwards to the recipient's access point. This is called the four-corner model: you, your access point, the recipient's access point and the recipient.

The format is Peppol BIS 3, which is a particular version of an XML invoice. The same format is used in several countries, so a setup for Belgium can often be reused elsewhere.

How it fits into Business Central

Business Central has an E-Documents module for sending and receiving electronic documents. On the E-Document Services page you choose the document format PEPPOL BIS 3.0, and Microsoft Learn says that this is a generic, code-based option.

To receive documents, E-Documents must be connected to an external access point, which handles communication and validation. Microsoft Learn mentions Pagero, Avalara, Logiq, SignUp and B2BRouter as supported access points and says that more are available on the Marketplace. Access points require their own agreements and may have their own fees, so get prices and terms directly from the provider.

Microsoft does not have a Belgian localization on its list of localizations for E-Documents, as it stood on Microsoft Learn in October 2026. That does not mean it cannot be done, but you must test the Peppol format against Belgium and check that Belgian field requirements are covered.

What you should check first

Which of your Belgian customers and suppliers are covered by the requirement.
Whether they are registered on Peppol, and which Peppol ID they use.
Which access point you will use, and what it costs.
Whether the invoices from Business Central pass validation at the access point.
Who at your company is responsible when an invoice is rejected.

Errors that keep recurring in setup

Most problems are not in the format itself, but in master data. If the customer lacks a correct VAT number, a reference or a valid unit on the lines, the recipient rejects the invoice. Correct master data before you test at scale.

Also run a trial on credit memos. They have their own requirements for a reference to the original invoice, and they are often forgotten.

What a test plan can look like, and next steps

Start with one Belgian customer and one invoice. Send it through the access point in test mode, if the provider has one, and see what the recipient actually gets. Then repeat with a credit memo and with an invoice with several lines.

Keep the result of each test. E-Documents in Business Central keeps status and a log for each document, so you can see whether the document was exported, sent or rejected. Compare the log with the provider's message, so you can find out where the error occurred.

We help with setup and testing of e-documents in Business Central. We are working on an e-invoicing app for Business Central. It is an idea under development, it is not available, and it has no price or date. You can see what we are working on at the link below.