Peppol E-Invoicing in Australia: Rules, Dates and Integration Checks
Peppol e-invoicing in Australia as of September 2026: the five-day Commonwealth payment rule, PINT A-NZ dates, ABN checks, validation rules and a checklist.
Luka Abramovic20 min read
Peppol e-invoicing in Australia is voluntary for businesses, but it shortens how long the federal government may take to pay you: Commonwealth departments and other non-corporate Commonwealth entities must pay a Peppol e-invoice within five calendar days, against 20 for any other invoice, and since 1 July 2022 that has applied to contracts of any value. The rule is the Department of Finance's Supplier Pay On-Time or Pay Interest Policy (RMG 417). It applies when both sides can exchange e-invoices over Peppol and have agreed to use them. The e-invoice also has to be in the current format. PINT A-NZ has been the mandatory Australian and New Zealand billing specification since 15 May 2025, and the older A-NZ BIS 3.0 document types were removed from the network on 31 March 2026 (A-NZ Peppol Authorities).
A reference list for Australian businesses that invoice government, or that run Peppol e-invoicing through an accounting package or ERP. Every row has a source, amounts are in Australian dollars, and everything was checked in September 2026. It is a practical summary, not legal or tax advice: the eInvoicing pages of the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) are the authority.
1. Who has to use e-invoicing, and by when
The ATO is the Australian Peppol Authority (ATO). Every rule below binds non-corporate Commonwealth entities, not their suppliers. For businesses, the ATO says e-invoicing is not mandatory. Treasury consulted on options for mandatory adoption by businesses in 2020 and on supporting business adoption in 2021, and no business mandate has followed as of September 2026. Several EU member states do oblige businesses, as our EU e-invoicing mandates table shows.
| When | Rule | What it means for a supplier | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Since July 2022 | Every non-corporate Commonwealth entity must be able to receive Peppol e-invoices. | Any federal department can take your e-invoice now. | ATO |
| Since 1 July 2022 | RMG 417 maximum payment terms: five calendar days for a Peppol e-invoice where both parties can deliver and receive e-invoices and have agreed to use e-invoicing, 20 calendar days for other invoices unless a shorter term is agreed. The earlier limit to contracts of $1 million or less was removed. | The terms cover contracts of any value, apart from the exclusions in paragraph 7 of the policy. They run from receipt of a correctly rendered invoice, which Part 3 of RMG 417 defines, so read the definition before you count days. | Finance, RMG 417 Part 1 |
| Ongoing | An entity that pays late owes simple interest for each calendar day from the day after the due date until it pays, at the ATO's general interest charge (GIC) rate on the due date, expressed as a daily rate. It pays the interest when it comes to more than $100. | The entity must calculate and pay it. Check the amount with Finance's interest calculator. | Finance, RMG 417 and its standard clause |
| Target date 1 July 2026 | 30% of all invoices received by these entities to arrive as e-invoices. The ATO, as Australian Peppol Authority, works with suppliers toward it. | Agencies compare their supplier lists with the Australian businesses in the Peppol Directory and ask the matches to send e-invoices. If you're listed, expect the request. | ATO |
| Target date December 2026 | Entities to process e-invoices automatically and to send them, not only receive them. They report progress on both targets to the ATO each quarter. | If an agency bills you, your accounts payable side needs its own Peppol registration to receive the e-invoice. | ATO |
| State, territory and local government | The ATO's list of e-invoicing-enabled government entities includes state agencies and local governments. Their payment terms come from each jurisdiction's own policy, not from RMG 417. | Check each agency by ABN (section 4) and read the payment terms in your contract. | ATO list of e-invoicing-enabled entities |
What five days is worth: a worked example
An illustrative example. A supplier bills a department $55,000 a month, spread evenly. Paid 20 days after each invoice, about 20/30 of a month's billing is outstanding at any time, roughly $36,700. Paid in five days, it's 5/30, roughly $9,200. Switching releases about $27,500 of cash once, and it stays released while the contract runs. For your own customer, the cash released is about the monthly billing × 15 ÷ 30.
Late-payment interest is simple interest at a daily rate, so you can work out when a late payment crosses the $100 threshold:
Interest after d days late ≈ invoice amount × annual GIC rate × d ÷ 365
Days late before it passes $100 ≈ 100 × 365 ÷ (invoice amount × annual GIC rate)
Illustrative: $50,000 invoice, 10% a year
100 × 365 ÷ (50,000 × 0.10) = 7.3 daysUse the GIC rate that applied on the due date, from the ATO's website, and Finance's calculator for the exact amount.
This week: list your customers that are non-corporate Commonwealth entities. For each one, record whether you have agreed to e-invoicing in writing, because the five-day term depends on that agreement, and which purchase order or reference their accounts payable team needs on every invoice.
2. The format change: A-NZ BIS 3.0 to PINT A-NZ
Australia and New Zealand share one Peppol billing specification. A-NZ Peppol BIS Billing 3.0, an extension of Peppol BIS Billing 3.0, was replaced by PINT A-NZ, the A-NZ version of Peppol International (PINT). An integration built before 2025 may still produce the old format, which the network no longer carries.
| Date | What changed | Source |
|---|---|---|
| December 2023 | PINT A-NZ Billing specification published | A-NZ Peppol Authorities |
| 15 November 2024 | PINT A-NZ Billing becomes mandatory, per the A-NZ Peppol Authorities' migration notice. The old format stays usable until May 2025. | A-NZ Peppol Authorities |
| 1 March 2025 | PINT A-NZ document type identifiers under the older busdox-docid-qns scheme are removed. The same identifiers under the peppol-doctype-wildcard scheme stay active. | Peppol code lists (version 9.7) |
| 15 May 2025 | A-NZ BIS 3.0 extensions phased out. PINT A-NZ is the only billing specification. | A-NZ Peppol Authorities |
| 22 May 2025 | A-NZ BIS 3.0 deprecated and no longer maintained. | A-NZ Peppol Authorities |
| 31 March 2026 | A-NZ BIS 3.0 invoice, credit note and self-billing document types removed from the Peppol network. | A-NZ Peppol Authorities, Peppol code lists |
| 21 May 2026 | PINT A-NZ 1.1.3 (Billing and Self-Billing) released. It is the current version as of September 2026. | phive validator changelog; confirm on the PINT A-NZ specifications |
Check which format your system sends
Get one outbound e-invoice file, the XML rather than the PDF, from your provider's portal or your system's send log, and open it in a text editor. Two elements near the top say which specification it follows:
PINT A-NZ (current):
<cbc:CustomizationID>urn:peppol:pint:billing-1@aunz-1</cbc:CustomizationID>
<cbc:ProfileID>urn:peppol:bis:billing</cbc:ProfileID>
A-NZ BIS 3.0 (removed from the network on 31 March 2026):
<cbc:CustomizationID>urn:cen.eu:en16931:2017#conformant#urn:fdc:peppol.eu:2017:poacc:billing:international:aunz:3.0</cbc:CustomizationID>PINT A-NZ rules aligned-ibrp-001-aunz and aligned-ibrp-002 reject a document whose CustomizationID doesn't start with urn:peppol:pint:billing-1@aunz-1 or whose ProfileID isn't urn:peppol:bis:billing (PINT A-NZ specifications).
Two details that are easy to miss. Self-billing, where the buyer issues the invoice (a recipient-created tax invoice), has its own specification, urn:peppol:pint:selfbilling-1@aunz-1, with the process urn:peppol:bis:selfbilling. The supplier receives those documents, so a supplier whose customer self-bills must be registered for the self-billing document types, which are separate from the invoice ones. And the Order, Despatch Advice, Catalogue and Invoice Response need no A-NZ localization: Australian businesses use the standard Peppol BIS 3 versions (A-NZ Peppol Authorities).
3. Identifiers and document types to keep on file
Your provider configures most of these. Your system has to hold the data behind them, and you need them to check a provider's answers.
| Item | Value | Why it matters | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Participant identifier scheme for an ABN | 0151, the Australian Business Number (ABN) Scheme, issued by the ATO | Your Peppol address is iso6523-actorid-upis::0151: followed by your 11-digit ABN. The ATO's own is iso6523-actorid-upis::0151:51824753556. | ATO, Peppol code lists |
| Scheme for a New Zealand Business Number (NZBN) | 0088, the GS1 Global Location Number scheme, which the rules use for 13-digit NZBNs | An invoice to or from a New Zealand party must carry its NZBN under this scheme (rules aligned-ibr-002-aunz and aligned-ibr-005-aunz), not under 0151. | PINT A-NZ specifications, Peppol code lists |
| Goods and services tax (GST) branch registration number | The parent ABN with the three-digit branch number appended, for example 51824753556001 | A GST branch's tax invoices must include it. It has 14 digits, so it can't go in a field that expects an ABN. | PINT A-NZ Billing BIS |
| GST tax category codes | S standard rated, Z zero rated, E exempt, G export, O not subject to tax, under tax scheme GST | Every tax code in your ledger must map to exactly one. Rule aligned-ibrp-cl-01-aunz rejects any other code. | PINT A-NZ specifications |
| Attachment types | PDF, PNG, JPEG, CSV, XLSX and ODS | A timesheet or delivery docket attached in any other format fails rule aligned-ibrp-cl-04. | PINT A-NZ specifications |
The document type identifiers, which your provider registers so that senders can find you:
PINT A-NZ (scheme peppol-doctype-wildcard, process urn:peppol:bis:billing)
Invoice:
urn:oasis:names:specification:ubl:schema:xsd:Invoice-2::Invoice##urn:peppol:pint:billing-1@aunz-1::2.1
Credit note:
urn:oasis:names:specification:ubl:schema:xsd:CreditNote-2::CreditNote##urn:peppol:pint:billing-1@aunz-1::2.1
Self-billing invoice and credit note:
the same, with selfbilling-1@aunz-1 (process urn:peppol:bis:selfbilling)
Peppol Invoice Response (scheme busdox-docid-qns)
urn:oasis:names:specification:ubl:schema:xsd:ApplicationResponse-2::ApplicationResponse##urn:fdc:peppol.eu:poacc:trns:invoice_response:3::2.1
process urn:fdc:peppol.eu:poacc:bis:invoice_response:3The scheme name is part of the identifier. A sender's access point looks up the receiver by the full document type identifier, scheme included, so a receiver still registered only under the busdox-docid-qns versions of the PINT A-NZ identifiers, removed on 1 March 2025, can't be found by a sender looking up the current ones. If a buyer says your e-invoices never arrive, this is one of the first things to ask their provider about.
4. How to check who can receive e-invoices
The ATO says the number of Australian businesses registered on the Peppol network passed 400,000 during 2025 (ATO). Three checks tell you which customers and agencies are on it, and which providers and packages can connect you.
The ATO's registers of providers and products
The Peppol service provider register on the ATO's software developers site lists the providers the Australian Peppol Authority has accredited, and whether each offers access point (AP) services, service metadata publisher (SMP) services or both. The access point sends and receives the documents. The SMP publishes which documents you can receive. The same site keeps the eInvoicing Ready product register, of software that has passed the ATO's eInvoicing Ready product assessment. Look up your package there, whether it is Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks Online, Reckon or an ERP's e-invoicing module. A package connects through a provider, so one that isn't on the product register can still work. Ask the vendor which accredited provider carries its documents, then check that provider's entry.
The Peppol Directory, in bulk
The Peppol Directory collects the business cards that SMPs publish. The ATO's method for a bulk check: select "Participant IDs CSV" in the site's gray footer, open the file in Excel, select column A and split it on the colons with Text to Columns on the Data ribbon. Column C then holds the identifier scheme and column D the identifier. Filter column C to 0151 and column D is a list of registered ABNs (ATO). In step 3 of the Text to Columns wizard, set columns C and D to Text. With the default General format, Excel turns 0151 into 151, and a filter on 0151 finds nothing. The Directory's documentation says the export is rebuilt once a day from 02:00 UTC, and each file can be downloaded twice per 24 hours from one IP address, so save the file rather than fetching it on every check.
The Peppol Directory, one ABN at a time
The Directory also has a public REST API, limited to two queries a second, with HTTP 429 for faster callers. This script reads ABNs from abns.txt, one per line (spaces don't matter), and writes results.csv saying which are listed for PINT A-NZ invoices. Anyone comfortable with a terminal on macOS or Linux can run it:
while read -r line; do
abn=${line//[^0-9]/}
[ -z "$abn" ] && continue
if ! result=$(curl -sf "https://directory.peppol.eu/search/1.0/json?participant=iso6523-actorid-upis%3A%3A0151%3A${abn}"); then
echo "${abn},lookup failed, run again"
elif echo "$result" | grep -q 'pint:billing-1@aunz-1'; then
echo "${abn},listed for PINT A-NZ invoices"
else
echo "${abn},not listed"
fi
sleep 1
done < abns.txt > results.csvThe colons in the participant identifier are encoded as %3A, as the documentation advises. The match is on pint:billing-1@aunz-1 because a looser pattern also matches selfbilling-1@aunz-1, and would count a receiver registered only for self-billing. Read "not listed" carefully. Publishing a business card is voluntary and the Directory lists receiving capabilities only, so a participant missing from it may still be on the network. The ATO also notes that some Australian entities register under an identifier other than their ABN. A match is reliable. No match means "ask the customer".
5. Validation rules that reject Australian e-invoices
A document that breaks a fatal PINT A-NZ rule is not a valid e-invoice. The rules below, taken from the PINT A-NZ Billing 1.1.3 Schematron, depend on data your system holds rather than on your provider's XML mapping (PINT A-NZ specifications).
| Rule | What it checks | What your system must hold |
|---|---|---|
ibr-120 | Any identifier under scheme 0151 is 11 digits and passes the ABN check digit test | Valid ABNs on customer and supplier records, checked when the record is created (formula in section 7) |
aligned-ibr-001-aunz, aligned-ibr-004-aunz | The seller's ABN is present when the seller's country is Australia, and the buyer's ABN when the buyer's country is Australia | An ABN on every Australian customer record, including small and one-off customers |
aligned-ibrp-003 | A buyer reference or a purchase order reference is present | A field for the customer's purchase order (PO) number or reference, captured when the order is taken |
aligned-ibrp-005, ibr-091, ibr-121 to ibr-125 | Amounts have no more than two decimal places. Unit prices are exempt | Line and total amounts rounded to cents before sending |
ibr-027 | The item net price is not negative | Discounts sent as allowances, and corrections as credit notes, not as negative-price lines |
ibr-023 | Every line has a unit of measure code | A unit code on every product and service item, services included |
aligned-ibrp-059, aligned-ibrp-cl-01-aunz | Each line has exactly one tax category, coded S, Z, E, G or O | A mapping from every ledger tax code to one category |
aligned-ibrp-051-aunz, aligned-ibrp-s-09-aunz | The GST in each tax breakdown equals the taxable amount times the rate, rounded to cents, within a tolerance of 1 | Nothing extra. Rounding GST line by line passes |
aligned-ibrp-061 | A positive amount due has a payment due date or payment terms | A due date or terms on every invoice |
aligned-ibrp-016, aligned-ibrp-018 | Payment means code 30 or 58 (credit transfer) comes with a payment account identifier | Your bank account details wherever the invoice carries payment instructions |
ibr-079 | The document contains no empty elements | A mapping that leaves out blank fields rather than sending empty tags |
The GST tolerance is wider than you might expect: up to 1 in the invoice currency, a dollar on an AUD invoice. So an ERP that rounds GST on each line and adds the lines up passes: each line is out by at most half a cent, so only an invoice with roughly 200 or more lines, all rounding the same way, could reach a dollar. On the receiving side, don't reject a supplier's e-invoice because its GST is a few cents from your own calculation. Our ERP integration guide shows how to derive the tolerance for reconciling rounded totals.
The PO rule is the opposite case: it is looser than your customer. A buyer reference alone satisfies aligned-ibrp-003, so an invoice without the agency's PO number passes validation, reaches the agency and then can fail to match anything in its accounts payable system. Validation tells you the document is well formed. Only the customer can tell you it is payable.
6. Invoice responses: the seven statuses
A buyer can answer an e-invoice with a Peppol Invoice Response, a separate message that reports what happened to it. Australian buyers use the standard Peppol BIS 3 version. Peppol delivers a document only to a participant registered to receive that document type, so you get responses only if your provider has registered you for the Invoice Response transaction. Ask whether yours has.
| Code | Status | What it means, per the specification | What your receivables process should do |
|---|---|---|---|
| AB | Message acknowledgement | The buyer has received a readable invoice that can be submitted for processing | Mark it delivered and store the date. For an agency, it is your evidence of when a readable invoice arrived |
| IP | In process | Processing has started in the buyer's system | Nothing, unless it stays here past the payment terms |
| UQ | Under query | Processing has stopped until the seller provides more information | Send it to the account owner the same day; the status reason says what is wrong |
| CA | Conditionally accepted | Accepted under the conditions in the status reason; the buyer will pay accordingly unless the seller disputes | Compare the conditions with the invoice, then dispute quickly or accept the short payment |
| RE | Rejected | The buyer will not process this invoice any further | Close it and follow the action code: a new invoice, or a full or partial credit |
| AP | Accepted | Final approval given; the next step is payment | Expect payment within terms |
| PD | Paid | The buyer has initiated payment | Match it against the bank feed. Initiated is not received |
Responses also carry a reason and an action. The reason codes are NON (no issue), REF (references incorrect), LEG (legal information incorrect), REC (receiver unknown), QUA (item quality insufficient), DEL (delivery issues), PRI (prices incorrect), QTY (quantity incorrect), ITM (items incorrect), PAY (payment terms incorrect), UNR (not recognized), FIN (finance incorrect), PPD (partially paid) and OTH (other). The action codes are NOA (no action required), PIN (provide information), NIN (issue new invoice), CNF (credit fully), CNP (credit partially), CNA (credit the amount) and OTH (other) (Peppol BIS code lists, OpenPeppol).
Our rule for a Commonwealth customer: work a UQ or RE the same day. RMG 417's payment term runs from a correctly rendered invoice, and a query is the earliest sign that yours may not count as one.
7. What your accounting or ERP integration must handle
A provider moves documents. Whether they are right is up to your own system, and most of the work sits in master data and in what happens after a document arrives.
| Area | What goes wrong | What to build or check |
|---|---|---|
| Customer ABNs | An invoice to an Australian customer without a valid ABN on file is not a valid e-invoice: ibr-120 or aligned-ibr-004-aunz fails, and you find out at send time, when the invoice is already due to go | Validate ABNs when a customer record is created or edited, with the formula below. Store the ABN in its own field, 11 digits, no spaces |
| GST branches | A 14-digit branch number forced into the ABN field fails ibr-120. Dropping it leaves the branch's tax invoice without it | Hold the branch number in its own field, and confirm where your provider maps it |
| Purchase order references | An invoice without the agency's PO passes validation and then stalls in the agency's matching | Make the PO or reference required on orders for customers that issue them |
| Duplicates across email and Peppol | A supplier sends the same bill by email and over Peppol. The e-invoice identifies the supplier by ABN, while the emailed PDF is usually matched to a supplier record by name or email address, so an exact-match check between the two can miss it | Key duplicate checks on supplier ABN plus a normalized invoice number, and hold an ABN on every supplier record. The normalization steps are in our duplicate invoice detection example |
| Transmission IDs | A provider's message ID identifies one transmission, not one invoice. A resent invoice arrives with a new ID, so a check on message IDs lets it through | Deduplicate on business keys (supplier ABN, invoice number, amount), never on the transport ID alone |
| Embedded PDFs | A PINT A-NZ invoice can carry the supplier's PDF as an attachment. An accounts payable capture tool that reads attachments can create a second bill from it | Tell the capture tool to skip attachments on documents that arrived as structured e-invoices |
| Invoice responses | Responses arrive at the provider and stay in its portal | Import them against the invoice number, store status, reason and action, and route UQ, CA and RE to a person |
| Credit notes | A correction sent as a negative-price line fails ibr-027 | Send corrections as PINT A-NZ credit notes, and check the buyer is registered to receive them |
| Failures | A document that fails validation or delivery shows up only in a provider portal nobody watches | Pull failures into the same queue as your other integration errors. Our guide to connecting business systems specifies that queue |
Check every ABN on file
Export your customer and supplier ABNs into column A of a sheet. Put =SUBSTITUTE(A2," ","") in B2 to remove spaces, and this check digit test in C2, then fill both down. It works in Excel and Google Sheets and returns TRUE for a well-formed ABN:
=IFERROR(AND(LEN(B2)=11, MOD(SUMPRODUCT((MID(B2,{1;2;3;4;5;6;7;8;9;10;11},1)-{1;0;0;0;0;0;0;0;0;0;0})*{10;1;3;5;7;9;11;13;15;17;19}), 89)=0), FALSE)It applies the published method: subtract 1 from the first digit, multiply the 11 digits by the weights 10, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17 and 19, add the products, and check that the total divides by 89 with no remainder (Australian Business Register). The ATO's own ABN, 51 824 753 556, returns TRUE. Because 89 is a prime larger than any weight, weight difference or digit difference involved, the test catches every single mistyped digit and every swap of two different digits. What it can't tell you is whether a valid ABN belongs to the right customer, so look new ones up on ABN Lookup before you save them.
8. Readiness checklist and the email to your software vendor
Work through this with whoever runs your accounting system. Each check has a test and a pass condition, so "we think so" doesn't count as done.
| Check | How to test it | Pass when |
|---|---|---|
| Your registration | Run the Directory script on your own ABN, and ask your provider for your SMP entry | Your participant ID is 0151 plus your ABN, registered for PINT A-NZ invoices and credit notes, and for the Invoice Response if you want responses |
| Format | Open one sent XML | The CustomizationID starts with urn:peppol:pint:billing-1@aunz-1 |
| Customer ABNs | Run the formula over every Australian customer | Every row is TRUE, and FALSE rows are fixed before those customers are next invoiced |
| Tax codes | List every tax code in your ledger | Each maps to exactly one of S, Z, E, G or O |
| Units and references | List products without a unit code, and open orders from agencies without a PO or reference | Both lists are empty |
| Commonwealth customers | List customers that are non-corporate Commonwealth entities | Agreement to e-invoicing is recorded for each, in the contract or in writing |
| Trading partners | Run the Directory script over customer and supplier ABNs | You know which ones are listed for PINT A-NZ and have asked the rest |
| Inbound bills | Ask a supplier already on Peppol to send you one invoice by e-invoice and by email | It becomes one bill, and its PDF attachment isn't captured a second time |
| Responses and failures | Ask where a rejected, queried or undelivered invoice appears | In a queue that a named person works every day |
| Self-billing | Only if recipient-created tax invoices pass between you and a trading partner: ask your provider | They can send and receive urn:peppol:pint:selfbilling-1@aunz-1, and you're registered to receive it if a customer self-bills you |
Send this to your accounting software or ERP vendor, or to your Peppol provider, and ask for the answers in writing:
Subject: Peppol e-invoicing in Australia: eight questions before we switch it on
Hi [name],
We plan to send and receive e-invoices over Peppol from [system]. Could you
answer these in writing?
1. Is [system] on the ATO's eInvoicing Ready product register? Which
ATO-accredited Peppol provider carries our documents, and is it
accredited for both access point and SMP services on the ATO's register?
2. Do you send and receive PINT A-NZ (urn:peppol:pint:billing-1@aunz-1)
invoices and credit notes? Self-billing (urn:peppol:pint:selfbilling-1@aunz-1)?
3. Will our participant ID be iso6523-actorid-upis::0151:[our ABN]? Which
document types will you register for it, and does that include the Peppol
Invoice Response?
4. Which validation runs before an invoice leaves, and where do failures
appear? Who is notified, and how?
5. Do you check a customer's ABN when the customer is created, or only when
an invoice is sent?
6. When an invoice response arrives (AB, IP, UQ, CA, RE, AP or PD), where
does it show, and can we read it through your API?
7. When a supplier sends the same bill by email and over Peppol, how do you
detect the duplicate? Do you create a bill from a PDF attached to an
e-invoice?
8. What does it cost per document sent and received? If we leave, can our
Peppol registration move to another provider, and how long does it take?
Thanks,
[your name]If you invoice Commonwealth agencies or large buyers from an ERP or accounting system that can't yet send clean PINT A-NZ, bring one invoice that was rejected or never sent, and the vendor's answers to the email above. We'd start with the ABNs on your customer records and where validation failures end up, then scope the rest of our systems integration work from what those two checks show.