e-Invoicing in Luxembourg

Luxembourg is going to use the PEPPOL network for B2G e-invoicing. In order to be part of the PEPPOL network and be able to send invoices to public entities in Luxembourg, a company has to be connected to a PEPPOL Access Point. This is a specialized e-invoicing service provider certified by the PEPPOL network, which complies with the requirements of the PEPPOL network by converting an invoice into the necessary PEPPOL BIS 3.0 format and transferring it through the standard PEPPOL channel (AS4).

Once a company is connected to an Access Point, it is connected to all the PEPPOL participants in the network and can exchange not only invoices with Luxembourgian public authorities, but also other document types with any private company which is also connected to the network through their Access Point. How the PEPPOL mechanism works can be easily understood looking at the “four-corner-model”:

In this model, the invoice issuer sends the document in any format the sender wants (for example,  IDOC, XML, EDIFACT, etc.). It doesn’t matter which format the issuer chooses, because the document is then sent to the sender’s Access Point, responsible for the conversion of the document and transmission to the receiver’s (public entity or private company) Access Point in accordance with the PEPPOL standards. After that, the receiver’s Access Point transfers the invoice in the required format to the receiver. This makes the document exchange between the buyer and the seller convenient and easy, as document conversion and transfer are done by the Access Point in a secure and legally compliant manner.

For smaller and less technologically mature companies, there will be an online form provided to issue and transmit compliant e-invoices by manually entering the core elements of the invoice in the form fields and submitting the completed form. Alternatively, a company may upload an already compliant electronic invoice and submit it via the completed form.