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Lino and eInvoicing (PEPPOL)

Lino supports sending electronic sales invoices compliant with the European standard on eInvoicing.

The feature is under development and will be required for companies in Belgium from January 2026.

What’s implemented

To create the XML of an electronic sales invoice, simply print the invoice. This will generate an XML file that follows the EN 16931-1 standard (PEPPOL format). The printable PDF file contains a link to the generated XML file.

Note that invoices to private persons don’t generate any XML file because PEPPOL is currently meant for B2B exchanges.

Try our demo

If you want to see it with your own eyes:

• Go to https://cosi1e.lino-framework.org and sign in as robin

• Click on the link “730 Sales invoices (SLS)” in the main page

• Select an invoice having a company (not a private person) as partner. For example invoice SLS 26/2024.

• Click on the Print button in the toolbar. If needed, tell your browser to accept pop-up windows from this site.

• When the pdf opens, click on “e-invoice: /media/xml/SLS/1787.xml” to see the XML file.

You can manually validate the generated XML file for example on ecosio.org.

There is more to do

• Transmission of the XML file to an access point is not yet implemented.

• Import PEPPOL invoice files.

• The ecosio validator still reports issues.

Peppol code lists

The following sections explain a few things about Peppol in my words.

document type

One of the codes listed here.

transport profile

One of the codes listed here. Actually there is only one active transport profile, named AS4.

participant identifier scheme

A recognized official registry of identification codes.

One of the codes listed here.

Synonym for EAS?

EAS

Electronic Address Scheme

One of the codes listed here.

Synonym for participant identifier scheme?

Some examples of EAS codes:

• 9925 : Belgium VAT number

• 0208 : Belgium Company number

• 9931 : Estonian Company number

It seems that EAS 9925 is a subset of EAS 0208: every party subject to VAT in Belgium also as a company number, which is the same as its VAT number. Hence normal companies should be in both registers, while companies like insurances and some non-profit organizations (who are not subject to VAT and hence have no VAT number) will be only in EAS 0208.

The vat/peppol-ubl.xml template

In order to create the XML of an electronic sales invoice, Lino simply parses the vat/peppol-ubl.xml template. This file contains already quite some business logic and this work is not yet finished.

Here is some UBL jargon and how it maps to general Peppol jargon.

The parties of an invoice

• Seller : the partner who sells. Also called supplier, provider. See cac:AccountingSupplierParty

• Buyer : the partner who buys. Also called invoicee, recipient, customer. See cac:AccountingCustomerParty

• Payee : the partner who receives the payment. Shall be used when the Payee is different from the Seller. We currently don’t use this element <cac:PayeeParty>.

• Tax representative : <cac:TaxRepresentativeParty> : not mandatory and we don’t know what it is used for.

Both the seller and the buyer of an invoice contain a single mandatory element cac:Party, which contains a mandatory element cbc:EndpointID, which identifies the party’s electronic address.

This EndpointID element contains the identification number as a textual value, and must have an attribute schemeID, which refers to the EAS code to use when looking up the identification number.

The VAT category

The <cac:ClassifiedTaxCategory> element contains “a group of business terms providing information about the VAT applicable for the goods and services invoiced on the invoice or the invoice line.”

• <cbc:ID> : The VAT category code for the invoiced item.

• <cbc:Percent> : The applied VAT rate. A number, potentially with decimal positions

• <cac:TaxScheme> : a mysterious but mandatory element. According to our references it must contain exactly one child element <cbc:ID>VAT</cbc:ID>, where the word “VAT” seems to mean that the seller is identified using their VAT identifier. We don’t know whether it may contain other values.

VAT category

An alphabetic code defined as part of PEPPOL in the UNCL5305 code list

This list specifies the allowed VAT categories:

AE	Vat Reverse Charge	VAT is levied from the buyer.
E	Exempt from Tax	Taxes are not applicable.
S	Standard rate	The standard rate is applicable.
Z	Zero rated goods	The goods are at a zero rate.
H	Higher rate	A higher rate of duty or tax or fee is applicable.
AA	Lower rate	Tax rate is lower than standard rate.

For any given voucher item, Lino can say which of above codes to apply by interpreting the VAT rule. This mapping is done in VatItemBase.get_peppol_vat_category().

A good introduction into why we have all these categories and rates is here: VAT Rates in Europe 2024

Amounts

Vocabulary:

• Line net amount: Invoiced quantity * Unit Gross Price

• Allowances : discount or similar amount to subtract from the net amount

• Charges : some fee, tax (other than VAT) or similar amount to add to the net amount

• Line extension amount : Net amount + Charges - Allowances.

An invoice must have exactly one cac:LegalMonetaryTotal element, which provides the monetary totals for the invoice. It can have the following children (each child at most once):

• cbc:LineExtensionAmount: Sum of all invoice line amounts in the invoice, net of tax and settlement discounts, but inclusive of any applicable rounding amount.

• cbc:TaxExclusiveAmount: total amount of the invoice without VAT.

• cbc:TaxInclusiveAmount: total amount of the invoice with VAT.

• cbc:AllowanceTotalAmount

• cbc:ChargeTotalAmount: Sum of all charges in the invoice.

• cbc:PrepaidAmount: Sum of amounts that have been paid in advance.

• cbc:PayableRoundingAmount Amount to be added to the invoice total to round the amount to be paid.

• ‘cbc:PayableAmount <https://docs.peppol.eu/poacc/billing/3.0/syntax/ubl-invoice/cac-LegalMonetaryTotal/cbc-PayableAmount/>`__: outstanding amount that is requested to be paid

Amounts must be rounded to maximum 2 decimals. Each amount element has a mandatory attribute currencyID.

Sources of information

ec.europa.eu (European Commission):

• Transmitting electronic invoices

• eDelivery AS4 specification v1.15

• Code lists

peppol.eu (OpenPeppol AISBL):

• OpenPeppol eDEC Specifications lists the specifications of the Peppol eDelivery network.

peppol.org:

https://peppol.org/documentation/technical-documentation/edelivery-documentation/

other:

• https://github.com/OpenPEPPOL/peppol-bis-invoice-3/blob/master/rules/examples/base-example.xml

• Free PEPPOL and XML document validator

• 2020-06-01 The European Commission updates the Electronic Address Scheme (EAS) code lists

• https://bosa.belgium.be/fr/applications/hermes

My own blog entries:

• https://luc.lino-framework.org/blog/2024/0624.html

• https://luc.lino-framework.org/blog/2024/0704.html

• https://luc.lino-framework.org/blog/2024/1219.html

• https://luc.lino-framework.org/blog/2024/1220.html

Peppol jargon

Here are some PEPPOL-related abbreviations and what they mean.

PEPPOL

An international standard for exchanging structured electronic invoices and other business documents.

https://docs.peppol.eu/poacc/billing/3.0/

SML

Service Metadata Locator

https://docs.peppol.eu/edelivery/sml/PEPPOL-EDN-Service-Metadata-Locator-1.2.0-2021-05-13.pdf

SMP

Service Metadata Publishing

AS4

The only transport profile still in use.

“The AS4 technical specification [AS4] defines a secure and reliable messaging protocol. It can be used for message exchange in Business-to-Business (B2B), Administration-to-Administration (A2A), Administration-to-Business (A2B) and Business-to-Administration (B2A) contexts. AS4 messages can carry any number of payloads. Payloads may be structured or unstructured documents or data.” (ec.europa.eu)

UBL

Universal Business Language

UBL Invoice Syntax reference

BIS

Business Interoperability Specifications

See https://docs.peppol.eu/poacc/billing/3.0/bis/