Germany's E-Invoicing Mandate, Peppol, and What Comes Next for SAP Business One
Germany's e-invoicing mandate has been running quietly since January 2025, when every domestic business became required to receive structured e-invoices. Most SAP Business One partners got through that phase without much trouble, since receiving invoices is a fairly contained task compared to what's coming next. Here's what to expect, and how cks.eINVOICE handles it.
How cks.eINVOICE creates compliant invoices
cks.eINVOICE reads invoice data directly from SAP Business One and converts it into the format required for structured e-invoicing: UBL 2.1 under Peppol's BIS Billing 3.0 standard, which itself builds on the EU-wide EN 16931 invoice standard with a few extra required fields, such as a buyer reference number.
How does an e-invoice actually get delivered?
Once an invoice passes validation, cks.eINVOICE hands it off to a certified Access Point, which is essentially a secure gateway onto the Peppol network. From there, the Access Point looks up where the recipient's own Access Point is located, confirms its identity using a digital certificate, and delivers the invoice directly to it. A confirmation comes back automatically once the invoice arrives, and cks.eINVOICE shows that status inside SAP Business One, so there's no guessing whether an invoice actually went through.
How receiving an e-invoice works
Receiving works the same way in reverse. An incoming invoice is checked against the required format rules, then matched to the correct business partner in SAP Business One using their VAT number or Peppol ID. If the match is clear, the invoice is posted automatically. If it isn't — for example, a new supplier the system hasn't seen before — the invoice is held for a quick manual review instead of being posted incorrectly.
Why some invoices get rejected
SAP Business One stores invoice data in its own internal structure — customer records, item data, tax codes, and various custom fields — which doesn't automatically line up with what a structured e-invoice needs to contain. cks.eINVOICE handles that translation, filling in the required fields (like invoice number, seller VAT ID, and buyer reference) from the data already sitting in SAP Business One. Most rejected invoices trace back to exactly this gap: a required field that SAP Business One either doesn't store in an obvious place, or that was never configured. This translation step is the core problem cks.eINVOICE was built to solve.
Which countries are supported today
cks.eINVOICE currently supports Peppol connections for Germany, the Netherlands, Greece, Hungary, Denmark, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Switzerland, with more countries available on request. Customers get the full setup — invoice creation, delivery, and status tracking — without needing a separate system alongside SAP Business One.
Looking ahead
The EU's VAT in the Digital Age initiative (ViDA) is gradually making structured e-invoicing and real-time reporting mandatory across the whole EU, and Peppol looks set to become the main network carrying that traffic. Because cks.eINVOICE already runs on Peppol for the countries listed above, expanding to new countries and requirements as ViDA rolls out is a matter of extending an existing setup, not building one from scratch. For SAP Business One partners, that means getting clients connected to Peppol through cks.eINVOICE now is already most of the work needed for ViDA compliance later.
