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Insights
Ten months after Belgium introduced mandatory e-invoicing, data from hundreds of companies using Cashfeed reveals what actually happens inside their finance departments.
On 1 January 2026, Belgium made structured e-invoicing mandatory for most domestic B2B transactions. The promise was simple: fewer PDFs, less manual data entry, and invoices flowing directly into accounting software.
Ten months later, the reality is more complicated.
In October 2026, 76% of the invoices our customers received from Belgian suppliers arrived through Peppol. The remaining 24% still came through other channels.
And that percentage has barely improved since April.
But there's another, perhaps even more surprising finding: even when invoices arrive through Peppol, the attached PDF often contains more useful accounting information than the structured XML.
We analysed the incoming invoices of hundreds of Belgian companies using Cashfeed to understand what's actually happening.
Here's what we found.
1. Peppol adoption surged. Then it stalled.
The first months of 2026 saw a dramatic shift in how Belgian companies received their invoices.
Month | Invoices received through Peppol |
|---|---|
January | 44% |
February | 66% |
March | 69% |
April | 75% |
May | 78% |
June to October | 75 to 82% |
Within a few months, Peppol went from handling less than half of incoming invoices to around three quarters.
Since then, progress has been limited.
That doesn't necessarily mean a quarter of Belgian suppliers are ignoring the law. Not every document entering a finance department falls under the e-invoicing mandate.
But it does reveal something important:
Making e-invoicing mandatory doesn't automatically eliminate the other ways financial documents enter a company.
And when we look at the suppliers behind those remaining documents, it becomes clear why.
2. The remaining 24% isn't just about suppliers being late
In October, we looked at how Belgian suppliers delivered their invoices to Cashfeed customers.
63% sent all their invoices through Peppol.
29% sent none through Peppol.
8% used both Peppol and other channels.
You might expect the suppliers still sending PDFs to be mostly small businesses that invoice occasionally.
And you'd be partly right.
Almost four out of five suppliers that didn't send anything through Peppol appeared only once that month.
But when we looked at which suppliers generated the most documents outside Peppol, a different picture emerged.
We found well-known names across energy, water, telecom, insurance, banking, payroll, parking, food delivery, meal vouchers, airlines and government services.
Some of these suppliers still have transactions that should be invoiced through Peppol. Others provide services or issue documents that fall outside the mandate.
Insurance and certain financial services, for example, are VAT-exempt. Tax assessments and social security contributions aren't ordinary supplier invoices. Parking receipts and till receipts follow different processes.
The way these documents arrive tells a similar story:
35% came directly into a mailbox connected to Cashfeed.
18% were forwarded by e-mail.
45% were uploaded manually or photographed.
That last group is particularly interesting.
A restaurant receipt, parking ticket or purchase made while travelling often starts as a physical document. Someone takes a photo or uploads it.
You can't solve every document-processing problem by asking suppliers to send more Peppol invoices.
Some suppliers still need to switch. But a meaningful part of the remaining workload requires a different solution.
3. Even on Peppol, the PDF is still doing the work
This was perhaps our most surprising finding.
A Peppol invoice contains structured XML data. In theory, that should give accounting software the information it needs to process the invoice automatically.
Yet in October, more than 90% of the Peppol invoices our customers received still included an attached PDF.
And that PDF is often much more than a visual copy of the XML.
At Cashfeed, we compare the invoice lines in the XML with those in the attached PDF when additional detail may be needed.
The results surprised us.
For roughly one in three Peppol invoices, the line details used for bookkeeping came from the PDF rather than the XML.
And among invoices where both versions were compared, the PDF provided more useful details almost two times out of three.
Why?
Because there's a difference between having enough structured information for VAT processing and having everything needed for accurate bookkeeping.
Here are the most common gaps we found.
Accounting periods
In more than half of the cases where the PDF provided better information, it contained an accounting period that was missing or incorrect in the XML.
Think of annual insurance premiums, software subscriptions or service contracts.
The invoice amount and VAT might be perfectly structured, but the accounting team still needs to know which months the cost belongs to.
Cost centres and analytical accounting
In around four out of ten cases, the PDF provided information needed to allocate the cost correctly.
Things like delivery addresses, meter numbers, project references, file numbers and licence plates.
Those details determine which department, building, project or vehicle should carry the expense.
Without them, someone often has to investigate or correct the booking manually.
References and supporting details
In roughly a third of cases, useful references appeared only on the PDF.
Purchase order numbers, contract references, delivery notes and article codes.
The information existed. It just wasn't included in the structured invoice data.
The invoice breakdown itself
Sometimes the difference is even more striking.
We've seen Peppol XML files containing a single generic invoice line, while the attached PDF breaks the cost down into dozens of individual lines.
A leasing invoice, for example, might contain one total in the XML but show every vehicle, driver, licence plate and rental period in the PDF.
Energy invoices can have the same problem: one total in the XML, with the actual cost components explained in the attachment.
For accounting purposes, that breakdown matters.
Of course, this doesn't mean every Peppol invoice requires PDF extraction.
When Cashfeed learns that a supplier consistently provides complete XML data, it can skip reading the PDF lines. In October, this applied to almost four in ten Peppol invoices.
The lesson isn't that XML is bad. It's that receiving structured data and having everything needed for accurate bookkeeping are two different things.
4. Peppol arrives. And then the same invoice arrives again.
There's another problem we noticed as suppliers moved to Peppol.
Many kept sending the PDF by e-mail as well.
Sometimes it's simply a habit. Sometimes a supplier wants to make sure the customer received the invoice.
And sometimes the supplier does everything correctly, but someone inside the receiving company still uploads the PDF because that's what they've always done.
The result?
In May, Cashfeed caught a few dozen invoices that had already arrived through Peppol and then came in again as a PDF. By October, it was more than 300 a month.
Each duplicate is a potential double payment.
The tricky part is that these documents don't necessarily arrive together.
A Peppol invoice might arrive on Monday. Its PDF copy could be forwarded to accounting several days later.
If your accounting workflow treats Peppol and e-mail as separate channels, those duplicates can easily go unnoticed.
And once a duplicate reaches the payment process, the consequences can become expensive.
Peppol doesn't eliminate duplicate invoices. In some cases, the transition creates new opportunities for them.
5. What this means for finance teams
None of this makes Peppol a failure.
Quite the opposite.
Going from 44% to more than 75% of incoming invoices over Peppol in just a few months is a major improvement.
Structured invoices eliminate a lot of unnecessary work. They make delivery more reliable and provide a much better foundation for automation.
But our data suggests that finance teams should think beyond simply connecting their accounting software to Peppol.
Keep all your incoming channels connected. Peppol will handle most invoices, but you'll still need a way to process receipts, e-mails, uploads and documents from suppliers that haven't switched or don't fall under the mandate.
Bring everything into one workflow. Separate inboxes create blind spots. A shared process makes it easier to track what's received, what's been approved, what's been booked and what's ready to pay. We explored this in Why your Peppol inbox should be unique.
Don't assume the XML tells the whole story. For cost allocation, accounting periods and detailed invoice lines, the attachment can still be essential. We covered this in more detail in Peppol is not the full invoice.
Check for duplicates across channels. Your duplicate detection needs to recognise the same invoice whether it arrives through Peppol, e-mail or a manual upload.
And finally, keep encouraging suppliers to adopt Peppol. Just don't build an accounting process that depends on every document arriving that way.
Where Cashfeed fits in
At Cashfeed, we're building around this reality.
Peppol invoices, shared mailboxes, forwarded e-mails, WhatsApp photos, manual uploads and invoices collected from supplier portals through our Chrome extension all arrive in one place.
From there, Cashfeed extracts the information, prepares the accounting entries, manages approvals and checks for duplicates across channels.
For Peppol invoices, we go beyond the structured XML when necessary, using the attached PDF to capture additional details such as accounting periods, cost centres and references.
The goal is simple: finance teams shouldn't have to worry about how an invoice arrived or where the information is hiding. They should be able to trust that it's processed correctly.
Peppol has significantly improved how invoices are delivered.
Now it's time to make sure that improvement translates into less work for the people processing them.
"Peppol has made invoice delivery dramatically better. But receiving a structured invoice isn't the same as having an invoice that's ready to book. That's the next part of the problem we need to solve." - Jonathan Callewaert, CTO at Cashfeed
About the data
This analysis is based on incoming invoices processed through Cashfeed between January and October 2026.
For each month, we included Belgian companies that received at least one Peppol invoice through Cashfeed. We counted invoices from suppliers with a Belgian VAT number or Belgian address, excluding duplicates and archived documents.
This measures how invoices reach the finance teams using Cashfeed, not nationwide Peppol adoption or legal compliance. Some documents in the dataset may fall outside the Belgian e-invoicing mandate.
For comparison, approximately 6% of invoices from foreign suppliers arrived through Peppol.
“The only thing still worth writing down is what is genuinely specific to your own company. The rest, the model works out from the file itself”
Jonathan Callewaert
,
CTO
