Download the Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 specification and the associated UBL 2.1 XML schema from docs.peppol.eu; familiarize yourself with the mandatory elements including cbc:ID, cbc:IssueDate, cac:AccountingSupplierParty, cac:AccountingCustomerParty, cac:TaxTotal, and cac:LegalMonetaryTotal
Construct the UBL Invoice XML, ensuring the cbc:CustomizationID is set to the Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 customization URI and the cbc:ProfileID matches the relevant process (billing or self-billing); validate the document against both the UBL XSD and the Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 Schematron rules before transmission
Resolve the recipient's Peppol participant ID (ICD:identifier format, e.g., 0088:GLN or country-specific schemes) by querying the appropriate Peppol SMP (Service Metadata Publisher) using the SMP lookup URL constructed from the participant ID and the Peppol SML DNS zone
From the SMP response, extract the endpoint URL and the AS4 transport profile identifier for the recipient's access point; confirm the transport profile supports AS4 (the current Peppol standard) rather than the legacy AS2 profile
Submit the invoice to your own Peppol-certified access point (either self-hosted with OpenPeppol production certificate or a service provider); the access point wraps the UBL payload in an AS4 message and delivers it to the recipient's access point endpoint resolved from the SMP
Retrieve delivery confirmation from your access point; Peppol AS4 uses synchronous SOAP acknowledgements at the transport layer, but end-to-end business-level acknowledgement (MLR) is a separate optional Peppol process
Known gotchas
Peppol participant IDs use International Code Designators (ICD) that are scheme-specific; a GLN (0088) and a VAT-based identifier (e.g., 9925 for Austrian VAT) are different schemes and a recipient registered under one scheme is not automatically reachable via another
The Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 Schematron rules include both fatal (BR) rules that must pass and warning (BT) rules; validation tools that report only XSD conformance and skip Schematron will allow non-conformant documents to be submitted
Access point production certificates are issued by OpenPeppol and require a signed Transport Infrastructure Agreement (TIA); organizations that have not signed the TIA cannot obtain production certificates and cannot send or receive on the live Peppol network
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