What is Peppol?

Three things people mean by "Peppol"

The word Peppol is used for three related but different things, and mixing them up is the source of most confusion. First, there is the network: a set of service providers, called access points, that exchange business documents with each other under a common agreement. Second, there are the document specifications, such as Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 for invoices, which define what an invoice file must contain. Third, there is the organisation, OpenPeppol, a non-profit that maintains both and governs who may join.

A file can be valid against the Peppol specification without ever being sent over the Peppol network, and a document can only travel on the network if the sender uses an accredited access point. The two ideas are connected but independent.

How the network moves an invoice

Peppol follows what is often called a four-corner model. The sender uses software that hands the invoice to its access point. The sender's access point looks up where the recipient is reachable, using a directory keyed by the recipient's Peppol identifier, and passes the document to the recipient's access point, which delivers it into the recipient's system. Neither business needs a direct connection to the other.

• Participant identifier: a scheme code plus a value, for example a company number or a location number, that tells the network who the recipient is.
• Access point: an accredited service provider that sends and receives documents on behalf of its customers.
• Directory lookup: how the sender's access point discovers the recipient's access point and the document types it accepts.

Where Fiscalane fits

Fiscalane is an invoice creation and validation tool. It produces a UBL file that follows the Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 format and checks it against a documented subset of the EN 16931 and Peppol business rules before you download it. Fiscalane is not a Peppol access point and does not send documents over the Peppol network. To transmit the file you need an access point or a buyer portal that accepts uploads. Producing a well-formed file is the part that tends to go wrong first, and it is the part Fiscalane is built to help with.