Adding a partner, and checking they can receive an invoice
A partner is a customer or supplier you invoice. Adding one is the part everybody finds; the part that causes support tickets is knowing whether that partner can actually receive an electronic invoice before you send it.
Adding a partner
Open Partners in the left sidebar and click Add Partner.
The fields marked with a red asterisk are required: Recipient Name/Title, Tax Number, Postal Code, City and Country.
Peppol Participant ID is two fields, not one: a scheme on the left and the value on the right. For a German business the scheme is 9930 and the value is their VAT identification number, so a complete identifier reads 9930:DE123456789. A federal public buyer is addressed differently — scheme 0204 with their Leitweg-ID; see Leitweg-ID and public buyers. Leave the field empty if you do not know the value yet, but an invoice cannot be sent over Peppol without it.
Checking that a partner can receive
Docnova resolves the recipient at the moment you send: it looks the identifier up on the network and finds the platform that serves it. If the identifier is not registered, or is registered but not for the document type you are sending, the send fails rather than silently disappearing. The message you get back is the one to read carefully — "the receiver is not registered for the specified document type" is a different problem from an unknown identifier.
Check before sending rather than after:
- A German partner is looked up in the Peppol network. If nothing resolves, they have not finished registering with their own provider, and nothing you do on your side will make the invoice arrive.
- A partner in another country is looked up the same way. Their provider can tell you the participant identifier and which document types they accept.
Asking the partner for their participant identifier in writing is faster than guessing it from their VAT number. The two are not always the same, and a wrong identifier produces a routing error (221 ERREUR_ROUTAGE) rather than a delivery.
The partner has no Peppol identifier at all
This is common with small suppliers and with customers outside the reform's scope.
- For a German B2B partner, being able to receive a structured invoice has been compulsory since 1 January 2025, but the law lets an e-mail inbox satisfy that duty — so a German business can be compliant and still not be on Peppol. Ask before assuming.
- For anyone else, send the invoice by e-mail instead: the Send via Email action on the Sales Invoice screen delivers the same document as a PDF, and the invoice stays in your records.
Sending by e-mail is a delivery method, not a compliance shortcut. Once your own issuing duty starts, a domestic B2B invoice has to be a structured e-invoice whichever channel carries it.