Belgium

National Context

Like many other countries, digitisation of the economic landscape creates many opportunities and challenges in Belgium. Invoicing is generally perceived as a strategic process that can boost wide adoption of end-to-end automation in business and administrative processes, underpinning such digitisation.

Belgium adheres to the European vision, that recognises eInvoicing and eProcurement as a source of significant efficiency increase.

According to studies ordered by the Belgian Service for Administrative Simplification, converting the one billion invoices exchanged in Belgium each year into effective eInvoices is expected to generate savings of at least €3,5 billion per year. Consequently, the Belgian public sector takes many measures to stimulate generalisation of eInvoicing.

About the use of Peppol

The positioning of Business-to-Government (B2G) eInvoicing is carefully designed to stimulate and support this generalisation process. More specifically, the model that enterprises must implement to send their invoices to the Belgian government, must also be suitable for B2B exchanges. This is the main reason for:

  • adopting the Peppol approach in B2G eInvoicing
  • promoting its adoption for other exchanges (B2B)
  • developing instruments to support this evolution, such as belgium.beand Hermes

The Belgian government identified Peppol as the open, standards-based interoperability model that enables the delivery of any procurement-related eDocument from any sender to any receiver, in a suitable and affordable way.

Peppol is not a private operator. It is not perceived as concurrent to other existing solutions. Rather, it complements them, by offering a set of easily implemented guidelines to create an open, interoperable ecosystem composed of correspondents, operators, editors, and authorities, each filling a specific role.

If properly understood and rolled out, Peppol has the potential to enable the same level of performance and universality as the postal system in the paper-based world. Consequently, the roll out of Peppol in Belgium is a key component of the Belgian eProcurement generalisation strategy.

Since April 1st, 2016, the public sector recommends Peppol as the most convenient channel to receiving invoices.

Peppol Authority

Consistent with this strategy, since 1st January 2016, the Federal Public service Policy and support (BOSA) fulfils the duties of Peppol Authority for the country of Belgium. BOSA is charged with different transversal missions for the Federal government, also supporting digital transformation initiatives. The role of the Peppol Authority therefore perfectly fits with the missions of BOSA.

For more information about BOSA please visit https://bosa.belgium.be/

Use of Peppol in Belgium

BOSA has defined specific requirements for SPs providing Access Point (AP) or Service Metadata Publisher (SMP) services in Belgium. These are contained in the Peppol Authority Specific Requirements, which can be found in the Library here.

Further information

For a more detailed presentation of the Belgian approach, including specific guidelines applying to Belgium, contacts at the Belgian Peppol Authority, practical information about operators and editors, tools and instruments offered by the Public sector, awareness material and many more, please visit the official page of the Belgian Peppol Authority.

Useful links

The Belgian Peppol Authority official page discusses the following aspects:

Contact and support

General information:                                               

E-mail: peppol@bosa.fgov.be

 

Page last updated: 20th October 2021