How to Send a Peppol Invoice in Ireland
A practical walkthrough — from checking whether you need Peppol at all, to generating a compliant file and getting it to your buyer.
1. Check whether you actually need Peppol
If you invoice an Irish public sector body (a government department, the HSE, a county council, or an Education and Training Board), you are required to submit invoices via Peppol rather than PDF or paper. If you only invoice private businesses, Peppol is optional today — though the EU B2B mandate arriving from 2028 will change that.
2. Gather your invoice details
You will need: your company/trading name, address, and VAT number (if registered); the buyer's name, address, and Peppol ID (the four main Irish government hubs are pre-loaded in most tools, including ours); an invoice number, issue date, and due date; and each line item with description, quantity, unit price, and VAT rate.
3. Generate a compliant UBL XML file
A Peppol invoice isn't a PDF — it's a structured UBL 2.1 XML document following the Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 rules (itself built on the EU EN 16931 standard). Getting every mandatory field and identifier scheme right by hand is fiddly; a generator like PeppolInvoice.ie builds it correctly from a simple form.
4. Get a readable PDF version too
Keep a human-readable PDF alongside the XML — for your own records, for VAT compliance (Revenue requires records retained for six years), and for buyers who accept email invoices directly rather than requiring network delivery.
5. Deliver it
For actual Peppol network delivery, upload your UBL file to a Peppol Access Point — a certified provider that transmits it to the recipient's own Access Point. If the recipient doesn't require network delivery, you can simply email the PDF.
Do I need special software?
Not necessarily. Full ERP-integrated Peppol setups (SAP, Oracle, Sage) make sense for high-volume invoicers, but they're overkill if you only need to send a handful of invoices a month. A lightweight generator that produces a correctly formatted UBL file — without locking you into an accounting platform — is usually the faster, cheaper path for sole traders and small businesses.
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