If you do business with Belgian government services you might already be required to use e-invoicing. Soon, e-invoicing between companies in Belgium will also become mandatory.
Discover below what the options are for sending e-invoices and get started in a few easy steps.
In order to reduce the VAT gap, the Federal Council of Ministers in Belgium has approved a law that mandates electronic invoicing between companies, as of 01/01/2026.
For public procurement (B2G), electronic invoicing has been mandatory since 01/03/2024, at both the federal, regional, and municipal levels.
There are several ways to send an e-invoice to Belgian government institutions or to a private company. Choose your option below.
There are 2 options for legally sending e-invoices to the Belgian government services:
If you want to send invoices to a company in Belgium, you can use Peppol. It works for any type of business that is registered on the Peppol network, from freelancers to large multinationals. It only takes a few minutes to register on a certified Peppol Access point and send your first e-invoice.
If you want to send invoices via Peppol you only have to register on an official Peppol Access Point.
Follow the steps below to register on the Billit Access Point and send your first invoice.
Peppol is a secure and closed network with many advantages:
The identity of everyone affiliated with the network is verified, so you can be sure that the invoices you receive are genuine, and you avoid invoice fraud.
The invoices you send through the network are completely digital, so you can process them automatically in your invoicing software.
E-invoices in the UBL standard are automatically read correctly. This prevents human error during processing.
Linking to your bank account means that outgoing and incoming invoices are automatically matched and you get a better overview of your company's financial situation.
Peppol is fast: your recipient will receive your invoice within 10 minutes of sending it. Combined with automatic processing, this will save a lot of time.
Peppol is an open network for securely sending and receiving business documents such as invoices. It is designed to simplify the purchase-to-pay process between governments and suppliers. Peppol was developed by the European commission but is on its way to become a global standard.
There are many kinds of identifiers for sending invoices via Peppol. Find out the difference between each option below.
| Type | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Enterprise number | A 10-digit enterprise number for companies. It works as a unique ID and allows other entrepreneurs to safely look up information about companies they do business with. You are required to mention this ID on all of your invoices. | 1234 567 890 |
| VAT (indentification) number or VAT-id number | A unique identification number for entrepreneurs liable to VAT. It should be included on each invoice to customers. A Belgian VAT number starts with BE, followed by 10 digits. | BE 1234 567 890 |
| GLN | Stands for Global Location Number. It is used by companies to identify their locations, such as legal entities, functions and physical or digital locations. You can request a GLN number with GS1. | 5488888010598 |
| DUNS | D-U-N-S stands for Data Universal Numbering System and is a 9-digit code to identify a company or business entity. It is a unique number worldwide. | 123456789 |
If you don't have a VAT number you can use an enterprise number, GLN or DUNS number.
Enterprise numbers in Belgium are published and can be found in the CBE.
Every business has automatically been awarded a DUNS number. If you don't know that number for your company or your customer's, you can look it up in this database.
You can also request a GLN number with your local GS1 organization. Contact them for more info.
Your enterprise number will be automatically selected as the primary identifier.
If you want to prioritize a different number such as GLN or DUNS, you first have to add those numbers to your customer file.
As soon as you have more than one identifier added, you will see an extra e-invoicing tab appear in the customer file. Click it to see a list of identifiers for that customer. Select the bullet for the number you want to set as priority and confirm.
