XRechnung, ZUGFeRD and Peppol – All you wanted to know about the electronic invoice in Germany – What does SAP actually offer (part 4/4)

Knowing the context of the electronic invoice, and what XRechnung and ZUGFeRD stand for, let us now turn to SAP’s offering.

While SAP offered a consulting solution for sending ZUGFeRD invoices already in 2013, Peppol and e-mail delivery are now available as a standard product: SAP Document Compliance, cloud edition (formerly known as SAP Document Compliance, invoicing option for Peppol). SAP users with subsidiaries abroad already know SAP Document Compliance as an “on-premise edition” or under its former name “eDocuments”. In combination with SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite, SAP Document Compliance enables the end-to-end connection of governments or business partners in more than 20 countries.

The reason for a cloud edition is that certain services such as Peppol can only be offered by certified providers. In these cases, SAP has to manage the service and can only offer it as a cloud business application.

Illustration: Implementation options depend on country scenarios and/or on whether SAP can/must act as a provider.

The Peppol Exchange service for the cloud edition of SAP Document Compliance includes the usage rights for the required mapping tool (SAP Application Interface Framework, AIF) and for the on-premise connector. Business users benefit from a single user interface across all scenarios. Whether Peppol, email delivery, inbound or outbound invoices or non-Peppol scenarios such as FatturaPA in Italy, SII in Spain, invoice registration in Hungary or payment registration in Mexico, the cockpit looks just the same. This makes SAP Document Compliance a great solution for e.g. smaller billing teams and shared service centers.

The invoicing option for Peppol does not only cover Germany. Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden are already there. Further countries are in preparation or under investigation[1]. For the latest list, check the documentation at Supported Countries/Regions by Product. Cross-border billing between these countries is also foreseen by default.

The Peppol Exchange service also covers incoming invoices and has a standard interface to SAP Invoice Management by OpenText in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. Other countries are planned to follow at the discretion of OpenText. Any other invoice approval addon can use the same addon interface from SAP Document Compliance so that you do not have to disrupt your existing tools, settings and processes to receive Peppol invoices.

What exactly does the solution include for Germany?

• Billing from SAP modules SD, FI, IS-U (Utilities), Convergent Invoicing (CI), and for pilot customers RE-FX (Real Estate):
  • via the Peppol infrastructure in XRechnung (UBL) syntax for billing e.g. local authorities (using the so-called Leitweg-IDs) and business partners (using e.g. VAT-IDs)
  • via the Peppol infrastructure with the so-called Peppol mandatory profile (BIS BiIlling 3.0) for cross-border billing from Germany to foreign authorities and business partners
  • via email as PDF including UN/CEFACT XML. The SAP solution follows KoSIT-XRechnung specifications as prescribed for German public entities. As mentioned above (part 3), ZUGFeRD 2.1 meanwhile supports an XRechnung variant (version 2.1 Comfort XRechnung)
  • and, since December 2020, via email UN/CEFACT XML without PDF container
• Invoice reception via the Peppol infrastructure of XRechnung and BIS Billing 3.0 invoices, including a standard interface with SAP Invoice Management by OpenText that can be used with other invoice approval tools.

The latest Transport based Correction Instructions (TCI) for green-field installations of SAP Document Compliance includes all Peppol country notes and Germany processes until December 2020. This simplifies the initial implementations for greenfield customers (see note 2968068 for details).

Illustration: End-to-end Peppol process and the roles of self-service Peppol apps

The product documentation can be found at help.sap.com:

• Peppol Service Guide
• Installing and Configuring the SAP Cloud Platform Cloud Connector
• SAP S / 4HANA customizing for eDocuments or SAP ECC eDocument for Germany

The SAP Cloud Platform Missions for Peppol provides project teams with a project board including documentation links and blogs in context of the tasks. It is recommended to follow or look at it before starting a first Peppol or XRechnung project. It helps with questions such as how to connect the service, how to test, or how to select our own Peppol ID.

While a lot of information is available, it can accelerate projects to work with SAP Consulting or one of the many SAP Partners that have already implemented SAP Document Compliance. to complement your internal resources, they can support initial and delta implementations with different options from mere hand-holding to turn-key fixed-scope projects.

You can obtain sales information on “SAP Document Compliance, cloud edition” from your usual SAP contact person (Account Executive or SAP Reseller).

Let’s conclude and close the loop with part one of this blog series. Today, horses and carriages are mostly used for sport and hobby. When it comes to electronic invoicing, let us also move with our time .

The series is drawn from the German blog XRechnung, ZUGFeRD und Peppol – Alles, was Sie über die elektronische Rechnung wissen wollen (und vielleicht mehr).

For details on the German Peppol ID, see the blog LeitwegID – All you wanted to know about the identification of public organizations for electronic invoicing in Germany. For more information on SAP Document Compliance, see the related Community page.

See also our technical blogs on Peppol, XRechnung, and LeitwegID.

[1] This is current state of planning and may be changed by SAP at any time without notice and for any reason.