Adapting Your Existing Supplier Portal for UAE Peppol Electronic Invoicing: A Practical Guide

The UAE’s push for digital transformation is ushering in a new era of electronic invoicing, with Peppol at its core. If you’re a business with an established supplier portal, you’re likely facing the challenge of adapting your existing system and processes to meet the new e-Invoicing requirements. This guide provides a practical roadmap for integrating Peppol into your current infrastructure, ensuring compliance and maximizing efficiency. Acknowledging the Existing Landscape: Many businesses have invested in robust supplier portals to streamline their procurement and invoicing processes. However, the introduction of Peppol electronic invoicing necessitates a strategic shift. We understand the need to leverage your existing investments while seamlessly incorporating these new standards. For an easy and quick read, we have presented below the proposed electronic invoicing exchange system via Peppol 5 corner model which will lead to an automated electronic invoicing sharing from supplier to buyer. Blog list featured image With the introduction of electronic invoicing regulations, a significant shift is set to take place in the invoice-sharing process. Under the new framework, the e-Invoice will be transmitted from Corner 3 (C3) – the buyer’s Application Service Provider (ASP) – to Corner 4 (C4), the buyer. This marks a departure from the current practice, where the supplier (C1) either emails the invoice directly to the buyer or uploads it to the buyer’s supplier portal. As a result, existing invoicing workflows may undergo substantial changes to avoid duplicate work from Supplier side. With this new electronic invoicing flow, the process can transition towards an automated integration between C3 middleware and the C4 supplier portal. The new process may replace the existing practice of submitting invoices through the portal provided by buyer to their supplier to submit the invoices. With this electronic Invoicing exchange via peppol will require automation which will directly integrate and upload the e-Invoice in the above-mentioned portal. This will need IT teams to develop new integration to automatically create transactions in supplier portal and invoke internal approvals before purchase invoices are recorded in Accounts Payable module. Suppliers must ensure that any additional Supplier Portal related required data fields are also transmitted for e-Invoice generation or else it will lead to upload inaccurate electronic-invoice in the portal. This may lead to rectifications and issuance of credit notes. Key Process Changes 1. Elimination of Manual Uploads: C1 will no longer be required to manually upload invoices to the supplier portal, reducing administrative burden and potential errors. 2. Automation of Invoice Flow: C3 will play a central role in transmitting electronic-invoices to C4, ensuring seamless and real-time data sharing. Below are the Key Challenges & Considerations for the businesses: System Modification: How to integrate Pep