While Peppol is an international network that facilitates e-procurement and e-invoicing via access points, Mercurius is the software platform on which Belgian government departments can receive, process and send e-invoices and other documents in UBL format.
Mercurius acts as a central "email room" for all public sector entities. On the one hand, it receives incoming Peppol email messages, which can be retrieved by the appropriate department at fixed times. On the other hand, outgoing messages are collected and added to the Peppol network.
The goal of this platform is to support electronic invoicing by all Belgian governments and public services - the federal and Flemish government, as well as regional and local government services. With Mercurius, all e-invoices from suppliers reach the right government department.
Mercurius is connected to certified Peppol Access Points. Do you want to send your e-invoices to a Belgian public service? Then you need to connect to a Peppol Access Point and send your e-invoices to the Access Point to which Mercurius is connected.
In practice, the process to send and handle B2G e-invoices looks like this.
If you work with billing software such as Billit, it's especially easy to send your invoices to a government agency. All you need is the company number or Global Location Number (GLN number) of the government agency you want to invoice to, the PO number and an account from your billing accounting software.
The Mercurius portal offers companies some important advantages.
The Mercurius portal offers everyone the chance to track sending and processing e-invoices to all government agencies in a 100% correct manner.
On our website, you can read what Peppol is and how this secure European network enables the exchange of electronic invoices. One of the building blocks in e-invoicing is UBL (Universal Business Language). In early 2015, Billit was one of the first invoicing software systems in Belgium that allowed entrepreneurs to send and automatically process UBL invoices. But what exactly is UBL? How does it work and what are the benefits? An overview.
Read moreIn previous blogs we zoomed in on the basic principles and the importance of Peppol, UBL and Mercurius. In this article you will discover what Chorus Pro is. What do you need to know about this solution?
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