What is Peppol e-invoicing?
An e-invoice is structured invoice data sent from the supplier's accounting software to the buyer's accounting software through the Peppol network. Nobody prints, emails or scans a document along the way. A PDF attached to an email is digital too, yet someone at the other end still has to read it or run it through scanning software. Each business registers once, usually through eInvoicing Ready software or an e-invoicing service provider, and can then exchange invoices with any other registered business, whatever software that business uses.
- Suppliers send invoice data from their software, and buyers receive it as a draft bill.
- Businesses find each other on the network by ABN, so ABNs in contact records need to be right.
- The ATO says it cannot see invoice contents and does not receive a copy.
- The ATO accepts that an e-invoice issued under the A-NZ Peppol specification with all mandatory data is intended to be a tax invoice.
Who runs the network, and is it compulsory?
The Australian Government set up the Australian Peppol Authority inside the ATO in 2019. Its job is to govern the network, set rules for the digital service providers that connect businesses to it, and maintain the standards that let different software exchange invoices. The ATO describes e-invoicing as neither a compliance nor a revenue measure, and its business pages present registration as an option for each business to choose. Government buyers are moving faster. Non-corporate Commonwealth entities have had to be able to receive e-invoices since 2022, and the ATO's guidance asks them to reach 30% of invoices received as e-invoices by 1 July 2026 and to enable automated processing and sending by December 2026.
The ATO also reports that more than 300 state and territory government organisations and local councils use e-invoicing. For a client that supplies councils or Commonwealth agencies, being able to send e-invoices can make the buyer's processing simpler. Payment terms come from each contract and the buyer's own policies, so read the buyer's supplier information before telling a client to expect a change.
What changes for a practice's clients?
For a client that sends invoices, the change is mostly a registration step in the invoicing software and a check that each customer's ABN is recorded correctly. When the customer is also registered, the invoice goes as data. Customers who are not on the network keep receiving invoices the way they do now. For a client that receives bills, e-invoices arrive in the software as draft bills with the details already filled in. The reading and keying step goes away for those suppliers. Checking the bill against what was ordered, confirming the coding and approving payment remain with the client's staff or the bookkeeper.
How do clients register in Xero or MYOB?
The ATO's small business page links to step-by-step instructions from Xero and MYOB for registering, sending and receiving e-invoices, and lists routes for other products including Reckon, Saasu, SAP, Oracle NetSuite and Microsoft Business Central. Where a client's software has no e-invoicing feature, the ATO suggests a plug-in or app that integrates with it, or an e-invoicing service provider. The ATO also maintains the eInvoicing Ready product register, which lists certified products. Registration is usually done through the client's existing software, so confirm who holds the administrator role in the client's file before you start.
- Check the client's product on the eInvoicing Ready product register.
- Confirm who holds the administrator role in the client's file.
- Update customer and supplier contacts with correct ABNs.
- Send a test e-invoice to one registered trading partner before switching others over.
Where does automation still help after e-invoicing?
E-invoices arrive as data, so for suppliers on the network the capture step that AP automation used to handle shrinks to almost nothing. Most clients will still receive a mix of e-invoices, PDFs, photographed receipts and supplier statements for some time, because each supplier has to register before it can send one. The remaining work sits after capture: matching a bill to a purchase order or delivery, checking it against the supplier's usual pattern, coding it to the right account and tax rate, routing approval and preparing the payment run. Design those steps to accept either source, so an e-invoice and a scanned PDF go through the same checks.
How should a practice roll it out across clients?
The ATO's onboarding advice for businesses is to start e-invoicing with a small number of trading partners, then add more over time, beginning with those that bring the most benefit, such as high-volume or high-error customers and suppliers. A practice can apply the same order across its client list. Start with clients that already supply government buyers or receive many bills from the same large suppliers. Record which clients are registered, which software they use and who in the practice supports them. Questions about tax invoice validity or a client's GST position stay with the registered agent responsible for that client.