On 1 January 2026 the PDF invoice stopped being valid in Belgium. Not inconvenient, not discouraged: invalid. Since then, Peppol e-invoicing has been mandatory for all Belgian VAT-registered businesses invoicing each other, over a network that carries invoices directly from one accounting package to another.
Most Dutch business owners have missed this. Understandably: it is Belgian legislation and the Netherlands has not decided anything yet. Still, now is the moment to look at it, for two reasons that have little to do with each other.
The first is commercial and applies now. The second is legal and applies in 2030, but it does decide which choice is sensible today.
What exactly has changed in Belgium
Since 1 January 2026, every invoice between two Belgian VAT-registered businesses has to be a structured electronic file, exchanged over the Peppol network. Paper is no longer allowed. A PDF by email is no longer allowed. A PDF through a customer portal is not allowed either.
The obligation was set down in a Belgian law from 2024 and worked out in a Royal Decree published on 14 July 2025. The format is Peppol BIS Billing 3.0, based on the European standard EN 16931. The Belgian Federal Public Service Finance (FOD Financiën) applied a tolerance period for the first three months of 2026; that period has now ended. Fines range from a few hundred euros up to five thousand euros for repeat offences.
What this does not mean
Three misunderstandings I keep hearing in conversations.
- It does not apply to you if you have no Belgian establishment. If you supply a Belgian business from the Netherlands, you formally fall outside the obligation. If you do have a Belgian VAT number or a permanent establishment, you usually fall within it. Have your accountant assess that, not a blog post.
- It does not apply to invoices to consumers. B2C is outside it for now.
- It is not a new tax and not an extra return. It is an obligation about format and channel. What you invoice does not change; how you deliver it does.
Why Peppol e-invoicing already affects you if you supply Belgium
Over the past year, Belgian businesses have set up their purchasing administration for structured invoices. That means their system expects a Peppol file, matches it automatically with the purchase order and queues it for payment. If a PDF comes in, it falls outside that flow and lands in an exceptions tray that someone has to clear by hand.
Your invoice is not rejected then. It is paid more slowly. And at the next supplier review, the party that fits neatly into the flow is just a little easier to keep than the party that costs a manual step every month.
That is not a threat of legislation, because the law does not apply to you. It is a commercial advantage that is slowly tipping the other way.
Example: a Dutch supplier with Belgian customers
EXAMPLE 1
The situation. A wholesaler in the south of the Netherlands sends about 40 invoices a month to Belgian customers, all as PDFs by email. Since early 2026 the questions have been coming in: can it be done via Peppol? Two customers have said their accounts payable department now only processes PDFs with a delay.
The approach. The accounting package already supported Peppol, but the feature was switched off. Turning it on took an afternoon, including registering the Peppol address and sending a test invoice per customer. For the ten largest customers, the customer number in the source system was also linked to their Peppol ID, so the right route is chosen automatically.
The result. Invoices arrive the same day instead of waiting in a mailbox. The average payment time at the two customers who had raised it went down, because the invoice landed straight in their approval flow.
What was disappointing. In the first weeks, rejections came back for missing mandatory fields: a reference number the customer requires, a VAT code that did not match. That is normal and a one-off, but someone does have to read those messages. A Peppol integration without someone following up the rejections is a silent failure.
Illustrative example based on typical SME volumes, not a client case. In the free assessment we work through your own numbers.
And the Netherlands?
The Netherlands does not have a B2B obligation yet. Invoices to government already have to be electronic, which follows from a European directive and is set out in the Dutch Public Procurement Act (Aanbestedingswet), but businesses can still invoice each other by PDF.
The direction is clear by now, though. On 10 March 2026 a research report by EY, commissioned by the Ministry of Finance, was presented to the Dutch House of Representatives (Tweede Kamer). The recommendation: introduce e-invoicing for all domestic B2B transactions, with Peppol as the mandatory infrastructure, phased in between 2030 and 2032. A final cabinet position was expected in summer 2026, with draft legislation in the fourth quarter.
On top of that there is a firm European date that does not depend on Dutch policy. The ViDA package (VAT in the Digital Age), adopted by the Council in March 2025, makes electronic invoicing mandatory for cross-border B2B transactions within the EU from 1 July 2030, in line with EN 16931, with a ten-day deadline for issuing the invoice.
The figures that set the urgency
2030
Firm EU date for cross-border B2B invoices. Fixed, whatever policy The Hague adopts.
2030–2032
Proposed phasing for domestic Dutch B2B, according to the EY report.
Q4 2026
Expected draft legislation. Only then will you know for certain what is required of you.
Source: EY research report to the Dutch House of Representatives, 10 March 2026, commissioned by the Ministry of Finance; ViDA directive, adopted by the Council of the EU in March 2025.
Four years is shorter than it sounds
2030 feels a long way off. Try counting back from the side of your administration, though.
- You wait for clarity. Draft legislation at the end of 2026, parliamentary debate in 2027, final rules sometime in 2028. That is not unusual, and not unreasonable either.
- Your software has to keep up. Accounting packages are ready for it, but your stock system, your time tracking and your custom order portal may not be.
- Your master data has to be right. Every VAT number, every KvK (Dutch Chamber of Commerce) number and every Peppol address of every customer. With a few hundred relationships, that is a project, not an afternoon.
- You have to test it. With real customers, with real invoices, with the rejections that come with them.
If you start in 2029, you do all of this under time pressure, at the same time as everyone else, with the same suppliers, who will be fully booked by then. If you do it calmly in 2027, you do it right once.
The gain is not in the obligation
This is what the article is really about, and the reason I cover this subject at all.
An obligation is a cost item. You comply and you are done with it. A structured invoice is more than a mandatory format, though: it is data that software can read. And that makes processing possible that simply cannot be done with a PDF.
FLOW 1
Post purchase invoices automatically
Who it is for: Any business that processes more than fifty purchase invoices a month.
What it gives you: Invoices that are correct go through automatically. Only the exceptions land on your desk.
Watch out: Without purchase orders to match against, this does not work. Then you only check supplier and amount, and that is weaker.
FLOW 2
Payment reminder based on actual status
Who it is for: Service providers and wholesalers with recurring customers.
What it gives you: You know the invoice has arrived. That changes the conversation: no longer ‘did you receive it?’, but ‘it has been waiting for you since the twelfth’.
Watch out: A delivery confirmation is not a read receipt, and certainly not an approval. Do not mix up the three in your reminder text.
This is exactly why the Belgian obligation turned out to be a windfall for some businesses. The legislator made them do something they would otherwise never have prioritised, and afterwards they found that their accounts payable administration took a third less manual work.
When you do not need to do anything with this
Not every business gains from this, and I would rather say so now.
- You invoice almost only consumers. B2C falls outside all the obligations mentioned. Look at it again in five years.
- You send fewer than ten invoices a month. Switch on Peppol in your accounting package if it is already there, and otherwise leave it alone. At this volume, automated processing does not pay for itself.
- You have no Belgian customers and no cross-border sales. Then you have until at least 2030. Put it in your diary for early 2028 and get on with your work.
If you do have volume and you supply Belgium or Germany, things look different. Germany has had an obligation to receive e-invoices since 1 January 2025, with sending obligations following in phases.
What you could do this month
- Check whether your accounting package supports Peppol. With Exact Online, Moneybird, e-Boekhouden and SnelStart the answer is probably yes. The feature is often switched off.
- Ask your three largest Belgian customers what they receive. One email. The answer tells you more about your urgency than any article.
- Check your master data. Are all VAT numbers correct? Is there a KvK number for every business relationship? This is the dullest work in the whole process, and it decides whether the rest succeeds.
- Count your purchase invoices. Above fifty a month, automated processing is probably worthwhile, regardless of legislation. Below that, probably not.
In short
- Belgium: mandatory for domestic B2B since 1 January 2026. It does not apply to you without a Belgian establishment, but your customers do notice it.
- EU: cross-border B2B mandatory from 1 July 2030. That date is fixed.
- Netherlands: no decision yet. The direction is Peppol, phased 2030–2032. Draft legislation was expected at the end of 2026.
- The gain: lies in automated processing of purchase invoices, not in complying with the rule.
