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Hermes documents review round 202006

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Currently, no need for such an additional piece of documentation is identified. During the specifications review round, review participants are invited to describe the additional documentation they would need, if any.

Hermes – possible confusion with some Peppol principles – clarification

Context

With Hermes, BOSA DT implements the mandate formulated by the Minister of Digital Agenda in his policy note 2018, in respect of the solution described in the tender “BOSA 2018/M1087”, also approved by the Minister.

The policy goal is to help the suppliers to get a faster payback for their initial efforts to comply with Government requirement to use Peppol. The proposed solution is to (a) publish Peppol BIS Billing receiving capabilities for all Belgian enterprises (except the ones already publishing such capabilities), and (b) build a system that converts Peppol BIS invoices into equivalent PDF and forwards these by email to the receiver. This brings all Belgian enterprises within the reach of the Peppol senders - and their service providers.

In addition to the pay-back effect for the senders, the use of Hermes offers 4 strategic advantages:

1. It reduces the friction between the senders and the receivers. By converting Peppol BIS into PDF, Hermes gives more freedom to each party in the management of his e-invoicing transformation. For senders, it removes the need to maintain multiple channels (at least for domestic traffic).

2. It provides a communication channel to Belgian enterprises: in addition to the invoice, the email sent by Hermes also provides information to the enterprises about the available solutions on the market, thereby speeding up the adoption. Moreover, the enterprises receive the information along with the invoices. This is the moment where they are supposed to be most sensibilized.

3. It generates a significant growth of the volume of invoices that can be processed automatically. This will turn into a better/broader sharing of the costs of technology and boost the development of new tools. Consequently, it will help the IT sector to grow, and the Belgian enterprises to find suitable solutions at affordable prices.

4. It will also benefit to B2G adoption:

   • Directive 2014/55 obliges the public sector to receive e-Invoices, but it doesn’t oblige the private sector to send them.

   • This creates a risk that the public sector does not receive sufficient invoices to compensate the investments made to meet the obligation.

   • Hermes provides an additional motivation to the senders, and thus reduces the risk described above.

Hermes is only a temporary solution. In the Peppol terminology, all Hermes receivers are ready to migrate from day one. As soon as such receiver finds a suitable and affordable tool to automate the inbound invoice processing, he/she migrates onto it. Once a sufficient adoption of interoperable e-invoicing is achieved, Hermes will retire. The sooner the better.

Purpose of this paper

To use Hermes, Peppol senders must meet three conditions: (1°) be a Belgian enterprise, (2°) accept the conditions of use of Hermes and (3°) communicate the email address of their client. The degree of alignment of some of these conditions with the Peppol principles, seems to cause confusion to some stakeholders. The purpose of the present paper is to clarify how these conditions relate to the Peppol specifications.

Be a Belgian enterprise

BOSA DT is a Belgian Federal public service. It can only provide service to Belgian enterprises. Consequently Hermes can only handle invoices sent by Belgian enterprises. If Hermes would also handle invoices sent by foreign enterprises, it would clearly fall outside the scope of action of BOSA. BOSA cannot afford to take this risk.

This condition does not seem to be the subject of a discussion, hence it does not require any additional clarification.

Accept conditions of use

Description

Hermes is an intermediate component between the sender and the receiver. It cannot operate without a clear mandate from one of the two parties. Obviously it is not feasible to receive such a mandate from every Belgian enterprise. Therefore it must be mandated by the sender.

Clarification

In the first place, this formality is not related to Peppol. No entity, private nor public, can act as an intermediate without having an agreement with at least one of the parties. It is also needed to clearly delineate the boundaries of the service, such as the domestic coverage (previous condition). Therefore, in the current design of Hermes, this aspect is handled outside of any Peppol-related consideration, before even considering Peppol. Peppol comes into play in many other aspects of Hermes, but not in this one.

More specifically, Hermes must not be confused with a receiving Access Point (C3). It is situated in the business layer (C1 – C4). In C1, Hermes offers a solution to the sender to capitalize on their existing interoperable outbound invoicing systems. In C4, it is a gateway that takes care of the last mile, after the Peppol transmission. It is based on a non-ambiguous identification of the suppliers and customers coming from the authoritative source of Belgian enterprises. Such a construction indeed is difficult to map in the Peppol model. The Hermes reasoning supersedes the Peppol reasoning, it does not contradict it.

Email address

Description

By design, all invoices sent to Hermes must be converted to human readable format and forwarded by email to the final destination. Therefore the correct email address of the receiver is required. As this email address can depend on many factors (even for the same receiver), the supplier (sender of the invoice) must provide the correct address. The only other way to handle this need would be to store a suitable email address for every Belgian company in the Hermes configuration data. During design, this option was judged excessively complex and disproportionate.

Clarification

Requiring extra information on top of the BIS is not uncommon. Most if not all invoices exchanged over Peppol contain information that is not mandatory but nevertheless indispensable in the specific business scenario of the invoice. For instance, the Flemish government requires a Purchase Order number. The need for an email address is considered to be proportional to the scenario addressed by Hermes.

Conclusion

On the basis of the political mandate, the legal checks and the clarifications above, BOSA is confident that the Hermes construction cannot reasonably be judged to be in contradiction with the Peppol principles. On the contrary, deep down the fundamental principles of Peppol we can find the core principle of inclusiveness. Hermes increases alignment of Peppol with this core principle.

Additionally, BOSA explores possibilities to improve the alignment between Peppol and Hermes. The most likely option would be to define a national use case. This is the subject of an upcoming effort and is driven by additional factors and constraints.