If you’re a business owner, public administration official, or an integrator, you may have heard of Peppol Access Points.
But what is it exactly? What are the benefits? What criteria should you pay attention to when choosing your Peppol Access Point? Read on to find an answer to all your questions.
A Peppol Access Point is an organization that enables companies and public administrations to connect with the international Peppol network. This connection allows them to securely and reliably exchange electronic invoices.
The Peppol network can be compared to a telephone network.
In the Peppol network:
So, the role of the Peppol Access Point is to provide to Peppol participants access to the Peppol network to send and/or receive messages. The principles that they must abide by are managed by the OpenPeppol association that delegates the governance to Peppol authorities. There is usually one Peppol authority per country.
Apart from the connectivity aspect, the Peppol Access Points must also check the validity of the messages sent over the network.
Finding the Access Point that suits you best is not necessarily easy. We recommend that you consider the following six criteria to help you make your decision:
Easy to use, well documented and up-to-date APIs are very important to reduce the time necessary to connect to Peppol.
The APIs must cover the full lifecycle including the registration of participants, their re-registration, the sending and the receiving of documents.
We live in a realtime world and it is important that the provided interface provide realtime feedback. Many vendors will provide batched processing of invoices which are cumbersome and time consuming to manage and get proper reporting on.
With attachments contained in the documents, it is important that the Access Point does not restrict the document size too much.
The Access Point must provide an up-to-date service using the latest technologies and the latest versions of the validator to properly respect the standard and avoid having your document rejected by the recipients because your sending Access Point did not properly validate them.
The best Peppol Access Points focus on open-standards and provide what should be a commodity solution at the best possible price. Access to proprietary networks should be the exception to keep the costs low and avoid unnecessary complications.
A Peppol API is the technical interface that allows your software (ERP, accounting or invoicing tool…) to connect directly to the Peppol network without managing the underlying complexity yourself. In other words, it abstracts the technical layers of the Peppol infrastructure (AS4, SML, BIS Billing, etc.) so you can propose a modern interface to register participants, send and receive documents and track invoicing status in real time (thanks to MLRs and Invoice Responses).
Instead of dealing internally with multiple certificates, formats and evolving standards, you integrate once with your Peppol Access Point API, and the Access Point takes care of compliance, validation and transmission across the Peppol network. It’s the easiest way to make your software Peppol-ready without rebuilding or rethinking your stack.
To be certified and authorized to operate, Peppol Access Points must be managed by service providers who comply with strict requirements defined by OpenPeppol and national authorities.
To protect the integrity and confidentiality of your documents, they must also enforce end-to-end encryption, use the AS4 messaging protocol and have their information security processes certified under ISO 27001 (for information security management).
A compliant Access Point also makes sure that your documents are validated, routed to the correct recipient and archived when necessary. They should demonstrate that they are performing the service end-to-end with no changes in the documents being exchanged and full auditability. They should finally have a robust infrastructure to deliver the service 24/7 with a strict SLA.
One of the strengths of the Peppol network is that it is open and provider-agnostic. You are never locked in. If you are unhappy with the cost, the quality of support or the API of your current Access Point, you can change anytime. The process is even simpler than you might think!
Good to know:
Some large organizations might consider setting up their own Peppol Access Point. It’s a tempting idea: internalized infrastructure, autonomy, full control… But in practice, the road is long, complex… and expensive, of course.
To operate your own Access Point, you MUST:
On average, the full process takes 3 to 6 months (depending on your budget and whether you already have a team of Peppol-savvy developers). And once you are certified, you still have high ongoing cost to maintain your infrastructure through internal expertise.
By contrast, outsourcing Peppol connectivity to a certified Access Point like Digiteal only takes a few days. And the result is the same: 100% Peppol-compliant and secure document exchange.
COMPANY
Digiteal SA
BE 0630675588
LEI 9845000A44AB9CA60605
Rue Emile Francqui 6/9
1435 Mont-Saint-Guibert
Belgium
ABOUT DIGITEAL
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