Since 1 January 2026, electronic invoicing is mandatory between Belgian businesses. What changes for you, and how to comply with it.
Since 1 January 2026 , every invoice between VAT-registered businesses in
Belgium must be issued and received as a structured electronic document, over the
PEPPOL network.
A PDF sent by e-mail is no longer a compliant invoice — signed or not, readable
or not. What matters is not the reading format but the exchange format.
What actually changes
An electronic invoice is not a picture of an invoice. It is a structured
document that your customer's software can read without anyone retyping
anything.
Three consequences show up in the first week:
you stop printing, sending, and chasing to find out whether the e-mail arrived;
your customer receives the invoice straight into their own tool, ready for
approval;
data-entry errors disappear, and so do the late payments they caused.
Who is concerned
Every VAT-registered business established in Belgium, for its business-to-business
invoices. Invoices to consumers are out of scope.
Micro-businesses get no exemption: size does not change the obligation.
How the network works
PEPPOL works like the telephone network: every business has an address, every
operator can reach the others, and you do not need to know which one your
customer uses.
Your software issues the invoice in the standard format.
Your access point hands it to your customer's access point.
Your customer's software receives it and files it.
You only ever see the first step. The other two are the operators' business —
which is the whole point of a network.
What to check with your provider
Three questions are enough to sort through the offers:
is the access point included , or billed separately per document?
is receiving covered , or only sending? The obligation covers both.
what happens on rejection by the network? A rejected invoice is an invoice
that was never sent, and you need to know immediately.
In hilda business, PEPPOL sending and receiving are included in the Sales & Invoicing
module, which is part of every plan. No per-document surcharge.
The 120% deduction
Until 31 December 2027 , costs related to electronic invoicing qualify for an
increased deduction of 120%.
On a €99 monthly subscription, that is €1,425.60 of deductible expense for €1,188
actually spent over the year. The measure is run by the Belgian FPS Finance,
which publishes the exact conditions.
Where to start
If you still invoice from a spreadsheet or a word processor, the question is not
which format to pick: it is which software. The format follows.
If you already have management software, ask it the three questions above. The
answer is usually in the terms and conditions, rarely on the home page.
Want to talk it through?
Thirty minutes, on your real invoices. We will tell you frankly whether your
current tool is enough.
