PEPPOL CERTIFICATION – BENEFITS AND LEGAL REQUIREMENTS

PEPPOL Access Points are e-invoicing solution providers who offer services fully compliant with the PEPPOL Network requirements. If a company is a certified PEPPOL Access Point, all clients can exchange their electronic documents with other participants of the network. In practice, a supplier using an Access Point sends documents to the recipient. The Access Point, responsible for correct document transmission, is obliged to ensure compliance with the PEPPOL specifications. The document is sent to the recipient’s Access Point in charge of document translation for its client. Both buyers and suppliers are free to choose their Access Point provider.

Structured e-invoices contain core system elements that are compliant with legal regulations of different countries. Those elements are essential for enabling full interoperability during cross-border business operations.

BENEFITS

The benefits to certified providers of OpenPeppol membership are:

• influence the possible expansion of Peppol specifications, technical components and services provided by the Peppol network,
• influence the development of standardization in the area of e-procurement,
• access to a broad group of private and public sector members with experience in multiple countries.

CERTIFICATION OF THE ACCESS POINT

Certification of the Access Point includes the following steps:

1. Becoming a member of Peppol’s governing body;
2. Peppol Transportation Infrastructure Agreement (TIA) signing;
3. Due diligence checks;
4. Demonstrated technical and security competence (including Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 standards);
5. Application for Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Certificate.

REQUIREMENTS

Having the government as a client is required to send e-invoices according to the European Directive (2014/55).

Despite being adopted by the European Parliament and Council in April 2014, 2014/55/EU Directive has only recently come into force, setting out the e-invoicing standard that public sector organisations in Member States must adhere to. This standard, EN16931, was published in June 2017, detailing, among other things, the semantic data model of the core elements of an e-invoice and a list of relevant syntaxes.

• Member States must ensure that public contracting authorities and entities (such as defence, security, water, energy or transport) can receive and process e-invoices in accordance with the European Standard (central public contracting authorities and entities from 18 April 2019 and all other public entities from 18 April 2020).
• E-invoices sent by any company or government entity must comply with the European Standard.
• Member States should approach the Directive through the prism of their own laws, making sure that no local laws conflict with any requirements of the Directive.

Instead of a restrictive or uncomfortable dictate imposed by a European central authority, public and private organizations of all sizes are finding that Peppol provides greater security, reduced costs and fewer manual processing errors.

SUMMARY

The self-accreditation process can take months, and only after sufficient resources and competencies have been proven can transactions begin and/or customers be provided access to the Peppol network.

After going through the development stages of the Peppol Access Point configuration, maintenance tasks will continue to be performed, as well as the need to provide support to employees or customers, while staying abreast of any changes in requirements or new certifications required by the Peppol Authority or OpenPeppol.