Belgium’s e-invoicing mandate: what a Peppol BIS 3.0 invoice must pass

What the mandate asks of the file

The mandate fixes the channel and the format: the invoice travels over the Peppol network, through access points, as a Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 document. Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 is a CIUS of the European norm EN 16931: the norm’s semantic model (BT-* business terms, BG-* groups) written in UBL 2.1, narrowed by OpenPeppol’s rules. A credit note is a UBL CreditNote under the same specification.

A Belgian business is addressed on Peppol by its enterprise number under scheme 0208; Belgian providers also register the VAT number under scheme 9925, and the participant lookup asks under both. POST https://veriport.io/api/v1/einvoice/create writes 0208 and the enterprise number as the electronic address of a Belgian party (BT-34, BT-49) when you give none.

Who must comply, from which date for which business, the exceptions and the penalties are legal questions this guide does not restate: the SPF BOSA page in the sources is the reference, and your accountant the adviser.

The three layers, in order

The report names the layer of each finding in its source field: schema, cen-ubl or peppol-ubl.

The one Belgian rule: PEPPOL-COMMON-R043

PEPPOL-COMMON-R043 is a common rule: it applies to any identifier written under scheme 0208, typically the electronic address of a Belgian seller or buyer (BT-34, BT-49) and its legal registration identifier. The enterprise number has ten digits; the last two are a mod-97 key of the first eight. For 0202239951: 2022399 mod 97 = 46, 97 − 46 = 51, the last two digits. Dots and the BE prefix of the VAT number do not belong in a 0208 identifier.

A mistyped digit breaks the key, and the report points to the element by XPath:

curl -X POST "https://veriport.io/api/v1/einvoice/validate" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/xml" \
  --data-binary @invoice.xml

{
  "valid": false,
  "profile": "peppol-bis",
  "format": "peppol-bis",
  "syntax": "ubl",
  "container": "xml",
  "errors": [
    {
      "rule": "PEPPOL-COMMON-R043",
      "severity": "fatal",
      "path": "/ubl:Invoice/cac:AccountingSupplierParty/cac:Party/cbc:EndpointID",
      "message": "Belgian enterprise number MUST be stated in the correct format.",
      "source": "peppol-ubl"
    }
  ],
  "warnings": []
}

Common failures on Belgian files

The failures the validator pages list, plus the missing buyer address. The four marked † are the broken documents of the evidence run (2026-10-28): the KoSIT validator and this one rejected each of them, naming the same rule.

Belgian practice, checked as warnings

The Peppol release does not check Belgian VAT practice. The validator adds its own checks, reported as warnings with source: "veriport" so they are never mistaken for a published rule:

• VP-BE-004: a Belgian rate other than 21, 12 or 6 %.
• VP-BE-002: a structured communication (+++123/4567/89002+++) whose mod-97 key fails: twelve digits, the last two the first ten modulo 97 (97 for 0).
• VP-BE-012: a seller enterprise number under 0208 that differs from the digits of its Belgian VAT number.

Check the recipient before sending

A valid file arrives only if the customer is registered on Peppol and receives Billing 3.0 invoices. The Peppol participant lookup (in Dutch) asks the network the way an access point does: the SML (zone participant.sml.prod.tech.peppol.org, U-NAPTR, the lookup Peppol has required since 1 November 2025) for the registration and the provider, the provider’s SMP for the documents the customer receives, the Peppol Directory for its registered name. A registration made today can take up to a day to reach every DNS resolver.

Checked against the reference validator

The evidence run of 2026-10-28 wrote ten Belgian cases through the API (a 21 % invoice, the franchise scheme of article 56bis, a credit note naming the corrected invoice, 21, 12 and 6 % in one invoice, the EU reverse charge, an intra-Community supply, the domestic reverse charge on works on immovable property, an exempt operation of article 44, a document-level allowance and charge, order and contract references without a buyer reference) and ran them through the KoSIT validator configured with the UBL 2.1 schema, the CEN rules and PEPPOL-EN16931-UBL 3.0.21: 10 of 10 Peppol files accepted. The product page publishes the table and the tool versions.

What a file check does not do

It does not send: transmission needs a certified Peppol access point, which may also check the envelope (SBDH) and the recipient’s registration. It does not decide the content: the VAT category, the rate and the exemption reason are the seller’s decision. It does not keep the file: the check runs in memory.