UK e-invoicing from April 2029

On 28 October, alongside the Budget, HMRC published its roadmap for e-invoicing in the UK.

From 1 April 2029, any VAT registered business will have to send its VAT invoices to other UK VAT registered businesses as e-invoices, and receive its suppliers’ invoices the same way. A PDF attached to an email will no longer count. The invoice has to go as structured data over a network called Peppol.

What Peppol is

Peppol is a network for passing invoices between different bits of software. Your system hands the invoice to an access point, which routes it to your customer’s access point, which drops it straight into their system with all the data in the right places.

HMRC is not in the middle of any of this. The roadmap is clear that they will not receive copies of your invoices. They are consulting separately on whether to add some form of digital reporting later, but it is not part of the 2029 rules.

The timetable

1. Spring 2027 – consultation on the UK technical standard and how access points are certified.
2. Autumn 2027 – guidance on how EDI and older systems fit alongside Peppol.
3. By April 2028 – the actual rules are published: scope, exemptions, the standard, which business identifier the UK will use, and updated VAT guidance. HMRC say they will not change the requirements after this point.
4. Summer 2028 – readiness testing with software providers.
5. 1 April 2029 – it becomes mandatory.

A few other points. HMRC will take over as the UK Peppol Authority from NHS Supply Chain. Invoices to overseas customers are not covered, although many countries on the continent already expect e-invoices anyway. Exemptions will be limited, and will follow the same digital exclusion rules as Making Tax Digital. And the UK has not yet decided which identifier businesses will use on the network, which is one of the bigger open questions.

Where Softrader is with this

We have been sending and receiving invoices over Peppol for a while now, because our customers on the continent needed it before anyone in the UK did. The e-Invoice Queue in Softrader Cloud shows what has been sent, what has been accepted and what has been rejected, and incoming invoices arrive as data ready to become a Purchase Invoice.

So for Softrader customers I expect 2029 to be mostly a case of switching it on. There will be some UK specific details to add once HMRC publish the standard, and we will build those as soon as the rules are settled. We will also go through HMRC’s readiness testing in 2028 like every other provider.

In the meantime there is no need to buy anything or change anything. HMRC themselves say there is no need to implement before the detailed requirements are out. It is worth having a look at how invoices move around your business now, and making sure your customer and supplier records have the correct VAT numbers in them, as that will be needed whatever happens.

If one of your larger customers is already asking for e-invoices, or you would simply like to get ahead of it, let me know and we will get you set up.