Regulatory updates - Australia

Peppol unveiled A-NZ Invoice and Self-Billing specifications v. 1.0.12, including validation artefacts, and PINT A-NZ v1.1.0.

BIS Billing 3.0 and eProcurement BIS

The Peppol BIS Billing v3.0.18 was released on November 18, 2024.

The Peppol eProcurement BIS can be used in Australia and New Zealand without localization.  

All changes relating to v3.0.18 release and the updates to the specifications and validation documents will become mandatory from February 17, 2025.

A-NZ Invoice and self-billing specifications v1.0.12

The adopted changes align with Peppol BIS Billing v3.0.18, and some code list and validation artefacts have been updated.

All changes relating to the A-NZ Invoice and Self-Billing specifications v1.0.12 will become effective from March 10, 2025.

PINT A-NZ Billing and self-billing v1.1.0

All changes relating to the PINT A-NZ v1.1.0 release will become effective from March 10, 2025. 

Further amendments

New compliance rules on how to use sender/receiver identifiers when enveloping a message in Peppol Business Message Envelope (SBDH) are added for all the post-award suite documents, including the A-NZ Invoice and Self-Billing extensions & PINT A-NZ specifications.

Regarding the changes to PINT A-NZ specifications, the support for Busdox Document Type Identifier Scheme is removed, meaning that ‘exact match’ receiving capabilities will transition to the Wildcard Document Type Identifier Scheme. This amendment will become effective when the Peppol Policy for use of Identifiers v4.3.0 comes into force. 

The guidance documents aiming to support implementation of the A-NZ specifications have been updated to align with PINT A-NZ.

On 14 May 2024, the government released the Australian Federal Budget for 2024-25.

Among the key initiatives is an AUD 23.3 million (ca. EUR 14.3 million) investment over four years to support the Australian Taxation Office in maintaining a secure e-invoicing network. This is in recognition that e-invoicing provides business benefits and is a key in fighting scams aimed at Australian businesses.

Pagero is closely monitoring the e-invoicing developments in Australia. Stay tuned!

Revised Peppol Authority Specific Requirements (PASRs) for Australia and New Zealand were recently released on 23 January 2024, accessible via OpenPeppol. This entails, among other things, an updated timeline for the PINT A-NZ migration roll-out plans.

The recently confirmed migration schedule

• As of 15 November 2024:
  • PINT A-NZ invoice (mandatory)
  • PINT A-NZ credit note (mandatory)
  • PINT A-NZ self-billing (optional)
  • PINT A-NZ self-billing credit note (optional)
• As of 15 May 2025:
  • The old A-NZ specifications will be completely phased out and no longer available for use

Important steps to take

To comply, Software and Service Providers, as outlined in the PINT A-NZ SP Engagement Paper, must enhance their capabilities to support the PINT A-NZ specification by 15 November 2024. Key actions involve enabling capability lookups, sending PINT A-NZ messages for Invoice Senders, and ensuring PINT A-NZ capabilities in SMP as well as the ability to receive and process messages for Invoice Receivers.

As OpenPeppol launched Peppol PINT early this year, PINT became an optional specification in all Peppol geography and only mandatory in individual jurisdictions by decision of the local Peppol Authority. Japan is the first country to implement JP PINT, and Singapore and Malaysia are currently working on the local variants of PINT in their jurisdiction.

The Australians and New Zealand Peppol Authorities (A-NZ PAs) have committed to migrating from the current specifications, ANZ Peppol BIS 3.0, to PINT A-NZ specifications.

Implementation plans

According to the two webinars conducted by the A-NZ PAs in October and November, the proposed timelines are as follows:

Get Ready phase (December 2023)

Publish A-NZ specification. All stakeholders review changes and prepare for implementation activities.

• ANZ Peppol BIS 3.0: Mandatory
• PINT A-NZ: Optional

Phase In/Implementation phase (March/April 2024)

Senders build PINT A-NZ lookup and send capability. By the end of this phase, all existing receivers will need to register with the PINT A-NZ receive capability.  

The A-NZ PASRs (Peppol Authority Specific Requirements) are expected to reflect the specification changes on 15 November 2024.

• ANZ Peppol BIS 3.0: Mandatory
• PINT A-NZ: Optional

Phase out (30 April 2025)

All users must finalize and deploy the capability of exchanging PINT A-NZ as PINT A-NZ will become the only supported specifications for sending and receiving invoices and credit notes.

• ANZ Peppol BIS 3.0: Deprecated
• PINT A-NZ: Mandatory

Main changes between ANZ Peppol BIS 3.0 and PINT A-NZ

• New business process and specification identifier values;
• Support for a new document type identifier scheme, the wildcard scheme, introduced through the Peppol Policy for using Identifiers;
• Business Rules – new rule identifiers, some rationalization and removal of redundant rules, and removal of rules with a ‘warning’ severity;

More detailed information can be found in the PINT A-NZ specifications.

On 19 July 2023, Minister for Small Business and Member for Newcastle in a joint media release announced the establishment of a new e-Invoicing Hub for businesses in the Hunter region of New South Wales in Australia.

The Hub, launched in Newcastle, aims to provide businesses with an opportunity to learn about the technology and help them realise the benefits of e-Invoicing. Engagement activities will continue across the region.

The government urges local companies and business consultants to take advantage of the program and learn more about how e-Invoicing might benefit them.

This has been an ongoing process; as we reported earlier, the Australian Treasury has released yet another consultation paper for stakeholders to express their wishes and opinions about e-invoicing. The latest consultation paper introduces a Finnish type of legal framework whereby Australian businesses reserve the legal right to request to receive electronic invoices via the Peppol Network. The term used for this procedure is Business eInvoicing Right (BER).

The consultation paper explores how the BER can be introduced to accommodate businesses of different sizes and across various industries. Its introduction aims to legally support companies willing to digitalize and automate their accounts payable invoices whilst promoting e-invoice submission on the supplier side. As already mentioned, the paper envisions the explicit use of the Peppol Network for facilitating the BER.

Pagero is an accredited Peppol Service Provider and fulfils all requirements to send and receive Peppol invoices and other documents in Australia and New Zealand.

The NSW Government has announced that receiving electronic invoices will enter into force from 1 January 2022 for all NSW public entities. Transactions worth up to AUD 1 million (ca. EUR 635 000.00) are in the scope, regardless of goods or services.

The announcement aims to increase work efficiency and save budget by reducing payment times, paperwork, and human errors. Both suppliers and buyers will benefit from this policy when sending and receiving invoices from the NSW authorities. At the same time, the Government will be leading the effort to adopt e-invoicing across Australia.

When the mandate takes effect, there will be an option for suppliers to issue invoices electronically to the NSW Government agencies or retain their current measures.

As part of the commitment to the Digital Business Plan, the Australian Government is investing AUD 15,3 million (ca. EUR 9,7 million) to increase awareness and adopt the mandatory e-invoicing for governmental agencies in 2022.

Who will the funding support?

This funding is aimed at supporting the Treasury and the Australian Peppol E-Invoicing Authority (ATO) in encouraging e-invoicing implementation for businesses. To achieve this goal, the following steps are going to be taken:

• Educational activities for raising business awareness;
• Ongoing work with states and territories to extend the e-invoicing adoption within the public sector;
• Working with payment providers, such as Visa, Mastercard, New Payments Platform Australia and others on the integration of the electronic invoicing into the main business payment methods, which will reduce business payment times;
• Supply chain pilots with large businesses for gaining insights and accelerating the e-invoicing implementation within the supply chains;
• Continuous consultation on potential regulatory and non-regulatory ways to drive e-invoicing adoption.

Expectations from the above steps

It is anticipated that these actions will contribute to further adoption of Peppol in both public and private sectors and pave the way for the e-invoicing mandate on a national level.

Moreover, implementing a universal e-invoicing system like Peppol would help improve not only the interoperability between business systems of different sizes but also increase the speed and scalability between the supplier and the buyer e-document exchange.

Pagero in Australia

Pagero has operated as an accredited Peppol service provider in Australia since 17 March 2020. Our office in Melbourne fully covers Peppol needs in the Trans-Tasmanian region, and the services meet the requirements for B2B trading and B2G via Peppol.

For more information on how your business in Australia can prepare for the upcoming e-invoicing mandate in 2022, we recorded a webinar with the ATO.

In the face of this year’s unparalleled economic challenges, Australian businesses have been looking for ways to further automate their trading processes to save costs as well as maximise cashflow. In this context, the Government’s initiative to extend the current e-invoicing mandate to include the private sector is a welcome contribution in line with the national digital recovery plan.

Mandatory e-invoicing by 1 July 2022

The Australian Government has issued an e-invoicing mandate for Federal Agencies and Departments and is currently aligning with State Government and territories to ensure a broadening of the mandates to include all levels of government.

The government mandate will activate on 1 July 2022, and it is anticipated that the B2B mandate will be closely aligned to this timeframe as well.

Options for mandatory B2B e-invoicing

The Australian Treasury has released the consultation paper for organisations and interested parties to provide feedback on three distinct routes to accelerating e-invoicing adoption.

• Option 1: a phased approach to introducing a requirement that all businesses adopt Peppol e-invoicing (without prohibiting paper invoices)

   

• Option 2: a mandate for large businesses only

   

• Option 3: non-regulatory options, such as a voluntary code of e-invoicing and/or promotion of Peppol e-invoicing by enabled organisations

   

Responses to the consultation paper will be accepted until 18 January 2021.

“We've seen firsthand the significant positive impact of e-invoicing mandates on the local economy in other parts of the world, and we're glad to see the Australian Government taking this very important step. Earlier this year we were selected by the ATO to the panel of suppliers for business-to-government e-invoicing. Now we stand ready to support the private sector in this transition towards digital ways of trading.” says Bertrand Gauch, regional manager at Pagero Australia.

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has selected and pre-approved Pagero to supply e-invoicing services to the Australian Federal, State and Local Government Departments. Pagero will make up part of a panel of service providers with which government agencies can engage directly without going through a full tender process. Through this expedited process, government agencies significantly reduce time and effort in the search for accredited e-invoicing-related and Peppol services.

E-invoicing in the digital business plan

Having adopted Peppol in 2019 as the standard framework for the exchange of e-invoices, electronic purchase orders and other e-documents, the ATO has now created the Panel Arrangement for Peppol Capabilities and Associated Services. This comes alongside the government’s recently announced digital business plan that includes the implementation of mandatory e-invoicing for all Commonwealth government agencies by 1 July 2022.

The Australian Government predicts that although mandatory e-invoicing will not come into effect for two years, 80% of all federal-level invoices will be electronic by July 2021.

“Being a pre-approved service provider to the Australian government is a testament to our capabilities. We’re proud that it’s now easier than ever for any Council, State Department or Federal Agency to join the Pagero Network with full confidence that our technology and offering not only is best in class, but also highly secure and trusted across the globe,” says Pontus Hanson, Pagero regional director in Australia.

Options for mandatory B2B e-invoicing

The digital business plan allocates $3.6M toward e-invoicing initiatives for suppliers to government agencies. This budget is also appointed for the investigation of options to accelerate the adoption of mandatory e-invoicing for all businesses.

As published by the Treasury, stakeholders can submit options for service providers to be considered for the purpose of mandatory B2B e-invoicing. Responses will be accepted until 18 January 2021.