How to prepare your JD Edwards invoicing for Peppol and reduce manual work

Many organisations still send PDF invoices by email. Recognisable, but no longer ideal. A PDF is essentially a picture: humans can read it, but systems cannot. The result is a lot of retyping, checking and calling back. It takes time, increases the risk of errors and makes it difficult to truly automate your billing process.

At the same time, more and more countries are moving to structured e-invoicing through Peppol. In Belgium, Peppol e-invoicing will become mandatory for B2B from 2026, and other countries are following. Instead of treating this as a regulatory burden, you can use this moment to rethink and streamline your entire invoicing process.

Why PDFs hold you back

With PDFs it feels like you are working digitally, but behind the scenes the process is still mostly manual. Invoices are emailed as attachments, someone needs to open them, extract the information, validate the details and enter everything into the system. If something does not match, you correct it manually or follow up by phone or email.

You also have limited visibility into the chain. You do not always see whether an invoice has been received, how far it is in the process or where it gets stuck. For a modern finance department this is no longer sustainable.

A suboptimal in-between step: XML and local formats

To improve this, many organisations moved from PDF to XML or UBL. That is a step forward, because the data is structured. But across borders it quickly becomes complex. Each country has its own standards and variations for e-invoices, with its own rules and validations. Our Peppol partner Storecove illustrates this fragmentation well in its e-invoicing guide. You encounter formats like Factur-X, Finvoice, Svefaktura, ZUGFeRD and FatturaPA, each with unique requirements and exceptions.

If you invoice multiple countries, you need to support all of these variants. Use the wrong format or miss required fields and your invoice may be rejected or delayed. Without a specialised partner, you quickly end up with a jungle of exceptions and custom work.

Peppol

Peppol was created to solve this fragmentation. It is both a network and a set of agreements about how electronic documents, such as invoices, should look and be exchanged. Over 1.4 million organisations in 78 countries are connected today.

Peppol’s strength comes from several key principles.

• Everyone uses the same basic structure for invoices.
• Documents are exchanged through secure access points instead of email.
• Each invoice is automatically validated before it moves further along the chain.

According to calculations in Storecove’s e-invoicing guide, this can reduce sending costs by about 59 percent and reduce processing costs on the receiving side by roughly 64 percent. In practice this means less manual work, fewer errors and faster processing, directly contributing to a healthier and more predictable cash flow. 

From Peppol to a fully automated flow in JD Edwards

For JD Edwards users, things become even more interesting when Peppol becomes part of one end-to-end invoice flow.

In practice it works like this. JD Edwards generates the invoice as usual. Through Orchestrator, one structured message is sent to Cadran’s e-invoicing solution. This connects to Storecove, a certified Peppol Access Point. Storecove automatically converts the invoice into the correct format for your customer’s country and delivers it through the Peppol network.

The status returns into JD Edwards. You can see in your own system whether an invoice has been delivered, accepted or rejected, including the reason if something fails. There is no need to email PDFs or retype information ever again.

What does this deliver in practice?

The difference compared to PDF workflows is most visible in daily operations. Invoices are processed faster and require far fewer manual actions. Because invoices are validated upfront, the chance of a failure later in the process is lower. This reduces investigation time and helps you get paid sooner.

Research on e-invoicing shows that the cost per invoice is significantly lower for electronic exchange than for paper or PDF invoices, both on the sending and receiving side. Add to that the fact that only registered parties can invoice via Peppol and that every step is digitally traceable, and you get a process that is faster, cheaper, safer and easier to justify to auditors or tax authorities.

For JD Edwards users, there is also no need to switch systems. Finance teams can stay within familiar screens. The complexity of formats, countries and networks is handled by the integration with Storecove and the Orchestrator setup.

How do you move from PDF to Peppol?

The transition starts with insight. How do you currently send invoices, to which countries and through which channels? Where do errors or delays occur and how much manual work is still involved?

Next, you assess whether your JD Edwards environment is ready to send structured invoices outward through Orchestrator and to receive status information back. Based on that, you can work with Cadran to configure the connection with Storecove and decide with which countries or customers to start. A phased rollout helps teams get used to the new process and allows you to refine the setup step by step.

Cadran’s role

Cadran offers a ready-to-use E-invoicing solution for JD Edwards, built with standard JD Edwards technology and connected to Storecove as the Peppol broker. The solution typically goes live within a few working days, after a short analysis of your environment. You do not need a separate contract with Storecove, and you manage support and further development through a single point of contact.

This prepares your invoicing not only for upcoming Peppol requirements in Belgium and other countries, but also positions your organisation for a future-proof, largely automated invoice flow within JD Edwards.