Electronic invoicing (EDI)¶

EDI, or electronic data interchange, is the inter-company communication of business documents, such as purchase orders and invoices, in a standard format. Sending documents according to an EDI standard ensures that the machine receiving the message can interpret the information correctly. Various EDI file formats exist and are available depending on your company’s country.

EDI feature enables automating the administration between companies and might also be required by some governments for fiscal control or to facilitate the administration.

Electronic invoicing of your documents such as customer invoices, credit notes or vendor bills is one of the application of EDI.

Odoo supports, among others, the following formats.

Configuration¶

By default, the format available in the send window depends on your customer’s country.

You can define a specific e-invoicing format for each customer. To do so, go to Accounting ‣ Customers ‣ Customers, open the customer form, go to the Accounting tab and select the appropriate format.

National electronic invoicing¶

Depending on your company’s country (e.g., Italy, Spain, Mexico, etc.), you may be required to issue e-invoicing documents in a specific format for all your invoices. In this case, you can define a default e-invoicing format for your sales journal.

To do so, go to Accounting ‣ Configuration ‣ Journals, open your sales journal, go to the Advanced Settings tab, and enable the formats you need for this journal.

E-invoices generation¶

From a confirmed invoice, click Send & Print to open the send window. Check the e-invoicing option to generate and attach the e-invoice file.

Peppol¶

The Peppol network ensures the exchange of documents and information between enterprises and governmental authorities. It is primarily used for electronic invoicing, and its access points (connectors to the Peppol network) allow enterprises to exchange electronic documents.

Odoo is an access point and an SMP, enabling electronic invoicing transactions without the need to send invoices and bills by email or post.

If not done yet, install the Peppol module (account_peppol).

Registration¶

Go to Accounting ‣ Configuration ‣ Settings. If you do not have the Peppol module installed, first tick the Enable PEPPOL checkbox and then manually save. Click Start sending via Peppol to open the registration form.

You can register either as a sender or a receiver. A sender can only send invoices and credit notes on Odoo via Peppol, without ever registering as a Peppol participant on Odoo SMP. If you have an existing Peppol registration elsewhere that you want to keep, but want to send invoices from your Odoo database and receive other documents in another software, register as a sender.

Fill in the following information:

• Check the receiver box if you want to register on Odoo SMP. If you are migrating from another service provider, insert the Migration key from the previous provider (the field becomes visible after you tick the checkbox).

• E-Address Scheme: the Peppol Electronic Address Scheme usually depends on your company’s country. Odoo often prefills this with the most commonly used EAS code in your country. For example, the preferred EAS code for most companies in Belgium is 0208.

• Endpoint: this is usually a Company Registry number or a VAT number.

• Phone: phone number including the country code (e.g., +32 in Belgium).

• Email: this is the email Odoo can use to contact you regarding your Peppol registration.

If you want to explore or demo Peppol, you can choose to register in Demo mode. Otherwise, select Live.

Tip

• Selecting Demo simulates everything in Odoo. There is no sending, receiving, or partner verification.

• For advanced users only, it is possible to run tests on Peppol’s test network. The server allows to register on Peppol and send/receive test invoices to/from other participants. To do so, enable the Developer mode (debug mode), open the Settings app, go to Technical ‣ System Parameters, and search for account_peppol.edi.mode. Click the parameter and change the Value to test. Go back to the Peppol setup menu in the Settings app. The option Test is now available.

When set up, request a verification code to be sent to you by clicking Send a registration code by SMS. A text message containing a code is sent to the phone number provided to finalize the verification process.

Once you enter the code and click Register, your Peppol participant status is updated. If you chose to only send documents, then the status changes to Can send but not receive. If you opted to receive documents as well, the status changes to Can send, pending registration to receive. In that case, it should be automatically activated within a day.

Then, set the default journal for receiving vendor bills in the Incoming Invoices Journal.

Your receiver application status should be updated soon after you are registered on the Peppol network.

All invoices and vendor bills can now be sent directly using the Peppol network.

Configure Peppol services¶

Once you are registered on Odoo SMP, the Configure Peppol Services button becomes visible to allow you to enable or disable document formats that other participants can send you via Peppol. By default, all document formats supported by Odoo are enabled (depending on the installed modules).

Contact verification¶

Before sending an invoice to a contact using the Peppol network, it is necessary to verify that they are also registered as a Peppol participant.

To do so, go to Accounting ‣ Customers ‣ Customers and open the customer’s form. Then go to Accounting tab ‣ Electronic Invoicing, select the correct format, and make sure their Peppol EAS code and the Endpoint are filled in. Then, click Verify. If the contact exists on the network, their Peppol endpoint validity is set to Valid.

It is possible to verify the Peppol participant status of several customers at once. To do so, go to Accounting ‣ Customers ‣ Customers and switch to the list view. Select the customers you want to verify and then click Actions ‣ Verify Peppol.

If the participant is registered on the Peppol network but cannot receive the format you selected for them, the Peppol endpoint validity label changes to Cannot receive this format.

Send invoices¶

Once ready to send an invoice via the Peppol network, simply click Send & Print on the invoice form. To queue multiple invoices, select them in the list view and click Actions ‣ Send & Print; they will be sent in a batch later on. Both BIS Billing 3.0 and Send via PEPPOL checkboxes need to be ticked.

Posted invoices that can be sent via Peppol are marked as Peppol Ready. To display them, use the Peppol Ready filter or access the Accounting dashboard and click Peppol ready invoices on the corresponding sales journal.

Once the invoices are sent via Peppol, the status is changed to Processing. The status is changed to Done after they have been successfully delivered to the contact’s Access Point.

A cron runs regularly to check the status of these invoices. It is possible to check the status before the cron runs by clicking Fetch Peppol invoice status in the corresponding sales journal on the Accounting dashboard.

Receive vendor bills¶

Once a day, a cron checks whether any new documents have been sent to you via the Peppol network. These documents are imported, and the corresponding vendor bills are created automatically as drafts.

If you want to retrieve incoming Peppol documents before the cron runs, you can do so from the Accounting dashboard on the main Peppol purchase journal that you set up in the settings. Just click Fetch from Peppol.