Dossiers and FAQs

This is an invoice in a structured electronic form, which is readable and interpretable automatically by software without human intervention. It is therefore not a simple PDF, Word or other document that would be sent, for example, by e-mail.

Electronic invoices have numerous advantages for both entities, issuers and receivers: increased automation and efficiency, faster processing, shorter payment times, reduced costs, better traceability of invoices, etc.

It is a contract for pecuniary interest concluded in writing between one or more economic operators (mostly companies) and one or more contracting authorities (public sector bodies) and having as its object the execution of works, the supply of products or the provision of services.

These are ministries, administrations, municipalities, bodies governed by public law (most non-profit organizations, public establishments, economic interest groups, etc.) and associations formed by the above-mentioned listed bodies.

The Ministry for Digitalisation publishes an updated lists of public sector bodies (Excel, 46 Kb) using Peppol and their respective Peppol IDs. It is also possible to directly consult the Peppol directory.

The law applies to all companies, regardless of their location and other bodies that issue invoices to the public sector bodies.

Except for the limited cases provided by the law, electronic invoicing concerns all invoices sent to a public sector body, regardless of the invoice amount or the type of service invoiced.

If a company chooses to use MyGuichet.lu, there are no additional costs associated, however this procedure does not offer all the advantages of electronic invoicing. The use of Peppol, on the other hand, is linked to the variable costs of renting, setting up or maintaining an access point. But all costs associated with the traditional invoicing process (issuing the invoice, paper, printing, envelope, manual sending, etc.) considered, electronic invoicing generally leads to lower invoicing costs.

The SME Packages - Digital programme offers tailor-made support to help companies implement an electronic invoicing solution. This support entitles the company to a grant of 5,000 euros from the Ministry of the Economy's General Directorate for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, in collaboration with Luxinnovation and the House of Entrepreneurship.

To be eligible for this support, a company must meet the following cumulative criteria:

• have an authorisation to set up granted by the General Directorate for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises
• meet the conditions for SMEs in terms of headcount, annual turnover and annual balance sheet.

Contact us by e-mail at digital@houseofentrepreneurship.lu or by telephone on +352 42 39 39 840.

As a general rule, using Peppol is always the preferred solution for a company of any size when sending a large number of invoices. Indeed, Peppol makes it possible to automate the process, which then leads to greater efficiency. However, in the short term, the alternative solutions offered on MyGuichet.lu are more suitable for businesses and other organisations that issue few invoices per month.

Peppol is a common delivery network for the automated issuance, transmission and receipt of electronic invoices. It was set up to allow the secure transmission in a structured format of invoices, in this case an XML format, including cross-border transmission.

The Peppol identifier is a unique number associated to each entity. It is comparable to an address (street, house number, postal code, locality) in the world of paper mail or to an e-mail address in the world of e-mail exchanges. This Peppol identifier is used to identify in Peppol in a reliable and univocal way the sender of a message, on one side, and the recipient of the message, on the other side.

All electronic invoices sent via Peppol always contain the Peppol ID of the sender and the Peppol ID of the recipient. Without a Peppol ID, the Peppol network cannot know who to send the invoice to, i.e. where to send a message.

The two "EndpoinID" fields are used in the Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 standard to indicate the Peppol identifiers of the sender and the recipient.

In Luxembourg, an organisation can use as Peppol identifier:

• the VAT number; or
• the identity number of the directory of legal entities (11 digits number also called "matricule").

The codelist to be used in Peppol for the 2 types of numbers is always the list 9938, that is LU:VAT.

The numbers are thus of type:

• 9938:lu10061242 (for the VAT number); or
• 9938:12345678910 (for the identity number of the directory of legal entities).

To send electronic invoices via the Peppol network, your billing software must be connected to Peppol via a Peppol access point. This can be done through various Peppol certified service providers or through the use of billing software that is connected by default to Peppol.

You can find a complete list of Peppol service providers on the Peppol website.

The Chamber of Commerce and the Chamber of Trades also offer non-exhaustive lists of Peppol service providers and invoicing software connected by default to Peppol (Luxembourg and foreign). These lists are published on the following page: https://efacturation.public.lu/en/guides.html .

If the invoice is refused after the transmission to the final recipient, you can request the reason for this refusal from the Ministry for Digitalisation at info@efact.public.lu.

Every electronic invoice format authorized in the Peppol network is automatically compliant with the European standard EN 16931-1:2017 and with one of the two legally authorized syntaxes:

• XML UBL (Universal Business Language) defined in ISO/IEC 19845:2015 and maintained by the non-profit organization OASIS Open;
• XML UN/CEFACT CII (Cross Industry Invoice) developed by UN/CEFACT, as specified in XML Schemas 16B (SCRDM - CII).

The standard electronic invoice used in Peppol is Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 in the XML UBL format. You can find all details about this standard here.

This standard is the only one that all Peppol access points are bound to be able to receive and process. It is therefore strongly recommended to always use this standard for sending.

Other types of electronic invoices that comply with legal requirements (XRechnung in UBL format and in CII format, Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 in CII format, Peppol EN 16931 UBL Invoice, etc.) can also be exchanged via the Peppol network. However, in these cases, the formats are either national or are hardly ever used in practice. Many or even the majority of the Peppol access points are thus often not able to receive these formats. Therefore, in general, it is not recommended to use these formats.

The currently accepted standards can be found in the “How to proceed” section of the page: Transmission of a compliant electronic invoice as part of a public procurement or a concession contract

The European standard for electronic invoicing EN 16931-1:2017 does not contain dedicated fields to indicate information about a holdback. The Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 standard, which must comply with the European standard, does not contain such fields either.

To cover the business needs that exist in this context at this time, we recommend using the free text field "PaymentTerms:Note" in Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 to provide all the information related to the retention. This possibility also exists in the form on MyGuichet.lu and is entitled "Payment Terms".

Yes, the date defined as a criterion in the amended law of May 16, 2019 on electronic invoicing is not a possible date of conclusion of a contract, but the date of issuance of the invoice. Consequently, any invoice issued after the date of application of the legal obligation must be a compliant electronic invoice, regardless of the date of conclusion of the contract under which the invoice is issued. Legal obligations take precedence over any contractual provisions.

There are many public and private websites offering services to test the conformity of an electronic invoice against one of the many existing electronic invoice standards, for example:

• ecosio: https://ecosio.com/en/peppol-and-xml-document-validator/ (allows to validate against many standards); or
• https://erechnungsvalidator.service-bw.de/ 

You can test if your invoices arrive at their destination by sending them to our test environment (using SMK) and to one of the two entities deployed in test:

• Ministry for Digitalisation - Participant ID: 9938:LU31168204
• Government IT Center (CTIE) - Participant ID: 9938:LU10889245-TEST or Participant ID: 9938:lu10889245

Other public sector bodies cannot be contacted in our test environment as they do not have a unique Peppol ID in this environment. Sending via Peppol should not be used to verify the compliance of files with the Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 standard. This conformity must be ensured beforehand by testing the XML files for conformity via one of the sites provided for this purpose or by using the schematron made available on the Peppol site.

In order to receive invoices via Peppol, you must be a member of the Peppol network. To be a member of Peppol, you can ask, via the form proposed below, the Ministry for Digitalisation to deploy you on the access point of the Peppol network of the CTIE (Centre des technologies de l'information de l'État). Or you can also make the necessary arrangements to connect to Peppol yourself by renting an access point from one of the many certified Peppol service providers.

In both cases, you have to fill in the following form to provide the Ministry for Digitalisation with the necessary information so that economic operators can send you electronic invoices both via Peppol and via the web forms of MyGuichet.lu: https://etat.emfro.lu/s3/efacturation-liste-OSP.

Following the information received via this web form, the Ministry for Digitalisation will, if you wish to use the Peppol access point of the CTIE, deploy you in the following days on this access point and inform you of the moment from which you are reachable via Peppol.

The Ministry will also, for those on the Peppol access point and those using another access point, use this information to update the list of PSOs connected to Peppol. This list is used in the MyGuichet.lu web forms and published in the folder dedicated to electronic invoicing on the website of the Ministry for Digitalisation.

If a public sector body does not inform us that it is connected to Peppol, the list is therefore incomplete and it will not be able to receive electronic invoices via the MyGuichet.lu web forms.

It is recommended to remind your economic operators of their obligation to invoice electronically in the framework of public procurement and concession contracts and to communicate them your Peppol identifier so that they know this identifier and can easily send you an electronic invoice via Peppol or via one of the MyGuichet.lu forms.

Foreign economic operators have exactly the same channels for the transmission of compliant electronic invoices as those available to domestic economic operators. These transmission channels are open, cross-border by default, non-discriminatory towards a foreign trader and can therefore also be used by foreign traders without any problems.

The following can be used:

• either, for the automated and efficient transmission and receipt of compliant electronic invoices, the international and cross-border delivery network Peppol (peppol.org);
• or, for the manual transmission of compliant electronic invoices, the 2 types of web forms offered on MyGuichet.lu .

Here are the links to the 2 types of web forms proposed on MyGuichet.lu :

1.         Manual input of an electronic invoice as part of a public procurement or a concession contract

2.        Transmission of a compliant electronic invoice as part of a public procurement or a concession contract

These web forms are available :

• in versions with authentication, which also allow the use of about fifteen foreign eIDs (electronic authentication means) from other European countries;
• in versions without authentication, especially intended for economic operators who do not yet have an eID or who do not have one of the many foreign eIDs accepted on MyGuichet.lu.

Those who would like to use one of the versions of the forms without authentication must first ask the public sector body receiving their invoice to provide them with a one-time code to be indicated on the first page of the form. They must also upload a purchase order or other document establishing the contractual relationship provided to the economic operator by the respective public sector body before transmitting their invoice to the invoice recipient.

You will find the contact details of the partners who can provide you with all the necessary information in the contact form on this website.

You can send your credit notes either via the Peppol network or by following the procedures available on MyGuichet.lu.

On MyGuichet.lu:

• for manual submission of the credit note, please use the procedure "Manual input of a credit note";
• for the transmission of the credit note via an XML file, please select the procedure "Transmission of a compliant electronic invoice", then select the "credit note" button in the "Document type" field at the start of the procedure.

As with an e-mail or a document sent by post, once an electronic invoice has been sent, it is no longer possible to rectify it. In all cases, a new, correct invoice will have to be issued.

If you need to send a credit note, you can do so either from the MyGuichet.lu forms or from Peppol.

If you notice an error in the invoice, please contact the concerned economic operator. As the Ministry for Digitalisation only transmits electronic invoices to the recipient, it cannot modify or rectify an invoice.

To avoid having to re-enter your details for each new invoice, you can fill in the fields in the "My profile" section. These fields will then be pre-filled in the next procedure(s) you create to send an electronic invoice.

Please note that it is now possible to duplicate an invoice on MyGuichet.lu. By clicking on a procedure that is still "in preparation", you will see a "Duplicate" icon at the top right of the screen, next to the "Delete" icon.

For an XRechnung, it is essential to add the Peppol identifiers of the sender and recipient to the XML file as follows (as they are not automatically indicated in this format):

• For an XML in UBL format, the identifiers of the sender (<cac:AccountingSupplierParty>) and the recipient (<cac:AccountingCustomerParty>) have to be provided, e.g.:
  • <cbc:EndpointID schemeID="9938">LU31168204</cbc:EndpointID>
• For an XML in UN/CEFACT CIIformat, the identifiers of the sender (<ram:SellerTradeParty>) and the recipient (<ram:BuyerTradeParty>) have to be provided, e.g.:
  • <ram:URIUniversalCommunication>

             <ram:URIID schemeID="9938">LU31168204</ram:URIID>

              </ram:URIUniversalCommunication>

The schemeID to use for Luxembourg public or private sector bodies is always "9938". For other countries, the schemeID prescribed in Peppol for this country has to be used.