Mandatory e-invoicing is coming. Is your business ready?

The UK Government is following many other European countries and announced its commitment to introduce mandatory e-invoicing from April 2029, with the Peppol electronic trading standard at the heart of the new approach. 

It will represent a significant change in the way UK VAT registered businesses exchange invoices with their customers and suppliers. 

But for Tecman customers, there's some very good news. We're already ready to support it. 

Through our product division, Clever Dynamics, Tecman is already a certified Peppol Access Point Provider, giving us the capability to connect Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central customers to the Peppol network. So, this isn't something on our development wish list for 2029. It's something we can help you with now. 

First things first: an e-invoice isn't a PDF 

Most businesses already send invoices electronically. 

Create the invoice in Business Central, generate a PDF and email it to the customer. Simple. But that's not what we mean by e-invoicing in this context. An e-invoice contains structured, machine-readable data that can pass directly from one organisation's finance system into another. 

There's no PDF that someone needs to open and process. There's no information that needs to be rekeyed or OCR'd. Instead, invoice data can move electronically between the two systems. And if that sounds a little familiar, it probably should. 

Think EDI, but with a common standard and network 

Many of Tecman’s manufacturing and distribution customers have been exchanging business documents electronically for years using EDI, or Electronic Data Interchange having implemented Clever EDI as an extension of Business Central. 

Purchase orders arrive electronically. Order confirmations go back. Despatch information is exchanged. Invoices can be sent automatically. 

Peppol takes a very similar idea but creates a common framework for exchanging that information. 

Rather than establishing different EDI connections based on the requirements of individual customers and suppliers, organisations connect to the Peppol network through certified Access Point providers. 

A simple way of thinking about it is: EDI as many businesses know it today, but with common rules and a common network designed to make connecting businesses automatic. 

And that's significant for Tecman because EDI certainly isn't new territory for us. We've been helping Business Central customers automate the exchange of business documents for decades. Peppol may be a different standard, but the fundamental challenge of getting structured information to flow reliably between different business systems is one we know very well. 

So where does Tecman fit in? 

Tecman is only Dynamics 365 Business Central partner in the UK that is already a certified Peppol Access Point Provider. That means we've got both sides of the equation: Deep experience of Dynamics 365 Business Central, plus our own certified route onto the Peppol network. 

For a Business Central customer, that's important. Whilst Business Central can generate Peppol ready e-invoices/documents, you still need a certified Peppol Access Point to transmit the documents. 

Rather than having to bring together a Business Central partner, separate integration expertise and a Peppol provider, Tecman can support the whole journey from Business Central onto the Peppol network. And we're ready to do that today. 

2029 isn't the starting gun 

It would be easy to look at an April 2029 deadline and put e-invoicing into the “we'll worry about that later” pile. We wouldn't recommend it. 

This is going to involve more than changing a setting in your finance system. Your customers, suppliers and other trading partners are part of the picture too. And every VAT registered business in the UK that’s trading with other VAT registered businesses has to be ready too. You don’t want to get caught out in the last-minute rush.  

Plus, if you are trading internationally, many other countries have deadlines ahead of those here in the UK. 

For businesses already using EDI, there may be changes to the connections and processes they already have. But rest assured, Tecman will continue to support all its customers with electronic trading whatever the standard or document type. 

And for organisations running Dynamics NAV or older versions of Business Central, it’s another reason to revisit the move to Business Central in the cloud – the capability to generate the Peppol invoices simply doesn’t exist in the older versions. 

The advantage of starting the conversation now is that you have time to understand what it means for your business, rather than simply reacting as the deadline gets closer. 

There's still more detail to come 

There is an important caveat. Although the Government has set out its direction, the UK's detailed requirements are still evolving through consultation and technical work. So, we're not going to pretend that every last detail of the 2029 requirements has been decided. 

What we can say is that Tecman already has the capability and experience to support Business Central customers with Peppol e-invoicing today, and we'll continue to adapt that capability as the final UK requirements become clear. 

But for now, there's one message we wanted to get out there: E-invoicing is coming. Peppol will be central to it. And Tecman is ready now. 

If you're using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and want to understand what Peppol and mandatory e-invoicing could mean for your business, talk to the Tecman team.