Show me how Peppol works

A number of times I’ve been asked by clients to show a live demonstration of how Peppol works. Typically, this is a difficult thing to visually simulate, as a Peppol provider will only manage 1 side of a trade transaction, so in the video below, I will represent the sender of an invoice, but the receiver will be represented by a different Peppol provider. It’s like watching me drop a letter into the mailbox, and a few seconds later hearing a voice saying “delivered” come from the mailbox, but where everything happens out of sight.

I can usually show the IBM track+ trace system, where documents pass through or arrive in Peppol, and the various status stages involved, but it’s still a one-sided display. What was missing, however, was a neutral receiving point, to send to and show the steps on my side, leading up to and during the act of sending, and the other side receiving.

These past days, the test version German ZRE (German Federal Government’s Central Invoice Submission Portal), has started to not only to accept, but to process through inbound Peppol XRechnung messages. Although, the receiving step has been possible for some time, now the sender can see the invoice once received, checked, and forwarded on to the final recipient.

So, what better time than to make a video to document this journey, which will become mandatory for businesses issuing invoices to German national level institutions in November 2020.

What am I looking at?

In the video, you can see how to take an already prepared XRechnung XML, and ftp it to the IBM test Peppol access point. In the Inflight Track + trace system, the “green light” indicates being successfully delivered to the receiver, and on the receiver portal the invoice was received, validated, and forwarded to the ultimate recipient.

While Germany at a national level will deploy mandatory use of XRechung via Peppol in late 2020, at a federal state, and regional / local government level, it can easily take longer before all receivers are Peppol enabled. Thus, I simulate how an XRechung can be alternatively sent via email to the same place, in case needed.

For the purpose of demonstration, I sent this from my email account, whereas in a real scenario, it would be the IBM Peppol Access Point inside of the Supply Chain Business Network that manages what kind of payload go to which receiver.

Hopefully, this can help shed some more light for an average business user on how this process works, and above all else, with IBM, we’re ready to help you prepare for XRechnung.

The 1st video below is the English language version, and the lower video shows the same process with a German language voiceover.

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