Receiving supplier invoices over Peppol: what actually changes

When people think of the e-invoice, they picture sending. Yet the first wall most Belgian businesses hit in 2026 is receiving. A supplier now sends their invoice in a structured format, straight from their software to yours. If you can't receive it, you miss a document you're nonetheless expected to process and deduct.

Receiving isn't optional

The rules leave no doubt here: since 1 January 2026, your business customers must be able to receive and process structured e-invoices. In other words, the ability to receive is part of the obligation, just like issuing. The European Commission puts it plainly: 'customers must be able to receive and process eInvoices'.

Peppol is the default channel. A company can't unilaterally decide to opt out of it — the Peppol route must always remain possible. In practice, the moment one of your suppliers moves to structured invoicing — and many already have — they expect you to be reachable on the network.

Hermes, the temporary safety net

The government built a fallback for latecomers: the Hermes platform. Its job is simple — convert a structured invoice into a readable format (PDF) for recipients who aren't yet equipped. Handy so you don't block a compliant supplier, but it's not a strategy: Hermes is described as a temporary solution, meant to be phased out as businesses go digital. You get a PDF back, which means you lose the whole point of structured data: you re-key everything by hand, like before.

What structured receiving changes day to day

An invoice received over Peppol isn't an image — it's data. Your supplier, their number, the lines, the amounts, the VAT rates all arrive pre-filled. In practice that means:

• no more manual re-keying of purchase invoices, so fewer input errors;
• easier matching against your payments thanks to the direct bank connection and automatic reconciliation;
• data that's ready for accounting export, without a detour through paper.

With Voilo, Peppol reception is unlimited and free, including on the free plan. Supplier invoices land straight in your account through a certified Peppol Access Point — no PDFs to file, no re-typing. The full flow is laid out in our Peppol guide.

What about suppliers still sending PDFs?

Not everyone switches overnight, and some foreign suppliers will keep emailing PDFs for a while. For those, AI-assisted capture reads the document automatically — supplier, lines, amounts, VAT — and turns it into usable data without retyping anything. Peppol also covers more than 30 countries, so a good share of your European suppliers will move to structured invoicing too.

Receiving is the part people forget to prepare. It's also the easiest to set up: you just need to be registered and reachable on the network. You can test it for free by creating an account, then compare the options on our pricing page if you need to issue beyond the free plan. For your specific situation, the Belgian tax authority remains the official reference.