This page lists some of the terms and abbreviations often used in Peppol. You can consider this an unofficial Peppol glossary. If you are missing a term drop me a note.
| Term | Meaning | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| AISBL | Association internationale sans but lucratif | A non-profit origanisation under Belgium law. See this page for details (in French). |
| AP | AccessPoint | The technical connector of a software solution that is capable of sending and/or receiving Peppol business documents |
| APP CMB | Agreements, Policies and Procedures Change Management Board | The OpenPeppol internal change management board responsible for legal and policy artefacts of the Peppol Interoperability Framework. See also CMB. |
|
AS2
deprecated | Application Statement 2 | Transport protocol specified in RFC 4130. This was the default transport protocol until 2020-01-31. It was replaced with AS4. AS2 is no longer supported since 2023-09-06 - see Transport Profiles Code List. |
| AS4 | Application Statement 4 | Transport protocol specified by OASIS. It was used in the eSENS project and adopted by CEF. The Peppol AS4 profile v2 is the mandatory transport protocol in the Peppol eDelivery network since 2020-02-01. |
| BC | Business Card | The document type for describing the non-functional aspects of a Peppol participant for listing in the PD. It is maintained decentralized in the SMP. |
| BIS | Business Interoperability Specification | A Peppol created specification that define how a business document exchange should take place and how the UBL elements are bound to semantical elements. The most known BIS is "Peppol BIS Billing 3" which defines the exchange of invoices and credit notes. |
| BLR | Business Level Response | Business document to be exchanged stating business level validation results (see also MLR). Peppol does not contain a single BLR - it contains different responses for different document types, like Order Response or Invoice Response. The usage of a BLR depends on the chosen "Process ID" which identifies the orchestration of message exchange to be used. |
| C1 | Corner 1 | The "Sending End User" is Corner 1 in the 4 Corner Model. |
| C2 | Corner 2 | The "Sending End User's Service Provider" is Corner 2 in the 4 Corner Model. |
| C3 | Corner 3 | The "Receiving End User's Service Provider" is Corner 3 in the 4 Corner Model. |
| C4 | Corner 4 | The "Receiving End User" is Corner 4 in the 4 Corner Model. |
| C5 | Corner 5 | Usually the "fifth corner" is the public administration able to receive tax related information. |
| C6 | Corner 6 | In extended Peppol models (e.g. ViDA), the "sixth corner" represents the tax authority's central data store, consolidating Tax Data Documents collected at C5. |
| CA | Certificate Authority | A trusted intermediate certificate as used in a PKI as e.g. in the Peppol PKI. |
|
CC
deprecated | Coordinating Committee | OpenPeppol internal community that is supposed to deal with cross-community topics. |
|
CEF
deprecated | Connecting Europe Facility | An instrument of the EC for funding and informing about e-Delivery, e-Invoicing etc. solutions. See https://commission.europa.eu/funding-tenders/find-funding/eu-funding-programmes/connecting-europe-facility_en/. The successor of CEF is the DEP programme. |
| CII | UN/CEFACT Cross Industry Invoice | One of the two formats identified by the EN to be supported by public entities. |
|
CIPA
deprecated | Common Infrastructure for Public Administration | The previous Peppol reference implementation, superseded by CEF now maintained by EC. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/sites/display/DIGITAL/eDelivery. |
| CIUS | Core Invoice Usage Specification | Defines how to adopt the EN to local requirements. It implies, that a CIUS is more narrow then the underlying specification. Billing BIS 3 is a CIUS of the EN. |
| CMB | Change Management Board | The Peppol internal team that makes decisions. There is one CMB for eDeC, PoAC and PrAC. |
| CNAME | Canonical Name | A specific DNS record type that uses a domain name as a value |
| CTC | Continuous Transaction Controls | A regulatory model in which tax authorities require near-real-time or real-time access to transactional data (e.g. invoices) during or immediately after the transaction lifecycle, rather than only through periodic tax returns. |
| DEP | Digital Europe Programme | The Digital Europe Programme (DIGITAL) is a new EU funding programme focused on bringing digital technology to businesses, citizens and public administrations. See https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/activities/digital-programme. It's the successor of the CEF programme. |
| DNS | Domain Name System | Basic part of Internet technology that maps domain names to IP addresses for technical routing. Used by SML, SMP and AP. |
| DRR | Digital Reporting Requirements | One of the pillars of the EU "VAT in the Digital Age" Directive (see ViDA), introducing near real-time digital reporting obligations for intra-EU B2B transactions. |
| EC | European Commission | Generic term for all entities directly or indirectly related to them (DG DIGIT etc.). |
| eDEC | eDelivery Domain Community | The successor of TICC within OpenPeppol. See https://peppol.org/learn-more/communities-and-work-groups/ |
| EN | European Norm | Usually this refers to the EN 16931-1, the European Norm on e-Invoicing. Outside of the Peppol world a multitude of different ENs exist. |
| EUSR | End User Statistics Report | An OpenPeppol statistics report on the number of transmitted documents. See https://docs.peppol.eu/edelivery/specs/reporting/eusr/ for the specification. See also TSR. |
| F2F | Face to face | This defines an event where people are meeting in real (face to face) and not just virtually in telephone conferences. |
| ICD | International Code Designator | An identifier scheme code defined in ISO 6523 that identifies the issuing organisation of an identifier. Used as the scheme prefix in Peppol participant identifiers, e.g. "0088" for GLN or "0184" for Danish CVR. |
| IR | Internal Regulations | OpenPeppol internal document that provides rules and guidance on several topics. |
| IRM | Invoice Response Message | Special BLR for invoices. Sometimes also called "IR" but that already has a different meaning. |
|
LIME
deprecated | Lightweight Message Exchange | Legacy Peppol transport protocol for pulling messages. Has been discontinued. |
| MC | Managing Committee | The Peppol managing board. |
|
MDN
deprecated | Message Disposition Notification |
The technical receipt of acknowledgment for AS2 transmissions defined in
RFC 3798.
The equivalent in AS4 is a SignalMessage with a Receipt or an Error.
|
|
MLA
deprecated | Message Level Agreement | Working title for a work group that should deal with structured response messages. The outcome will be the MLS specification. |
| MLR | Message Level Response | Business document to be exchanged stating technical validation results (see also BLR) |
| MLS | Message Level Status | The successor of the MLR specification maintained by eDEC. See https://docs.peppol.eu/edelivery/ for the specification. |
| NAPTR | Naming Authority Pointer | A DNS resource record type defined in RFC 3403. The Peppol Network was migrating from CNAME based to NAPTR based DNS lookups for SMP discovery. See also U-NAPTR. |
| OASIS | Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards | International standardization organisation. See https://www.oasis-open.org/. |
| OpenPeppol AISBL | The organisation responsible for maintaining Peppol standards and running the transport infrastructure. See https://peppol.org/. See also AISBL. | |
| OO | Operating Office | The organisational unit of OpenPeppol AISBL responsible for the maintenance of the Peppol Network. |
| PA | Peppol Authority | A local authority managing and supporting the regional Service Providers. Jurisdictions not having their own PA, are managed and supported by OpenPeppol directly. |
| PAC | Peppol Authority Community | OpenPeppol internal group of Peppol Authorities. |
| PCA | Peppol Coordinating Authority | The Peppol Authority that acts as the PA for all jurisdictions where none is defined. This role is fulfilled by OpenPeppol. |
| PD | Peppol Directory | A central Peppol service that should help in mapping Peppol participant IDs to the participant names and countries. See https://docs.peppol.eu/edelivery for the specification. |
|
PEPPOL
deprecated | Pan European Public Procurement On-Line | This is the European project that initiated all this. Started as a European Large Scale Pilot and is now maintained by OpenPeppol AISBL. Since middle of 2019 the abbreviation was officially replaced with "Peppol" as a noun. |
| PFUOI | Peppol Policy for the Use of Identifiers | The OpenPeppol policy document defining the syntax and use of Peppol identifiers (participant, document type, process and transport profile identifiers). |
| PINT | Peppol International (Invoice) | The Peppol International Invoice specification - a globally aligned invoice model with shared, aligned and distinct data areas, and country-specific specializations. |
| PKI | Public Key Infrastructure | The framework of certificates, keys and authorities used to secure the Peppol Network. Peppol operates its own PKI for AP and SMP certificates. See also CA. |
| PoAC | Post-Award Domain Community | Peppol internal team to manage the post-award assets. See https://peppol.org/learn-more/communities-and-work-groups/ |
|
PoACC
deprecated | Post-Award Coordinating Community | The old term for PoAC. |
| PID | Participant identifier | This is the technical identifier for the sender and receiver of a document exchange. This is also used in an SMP as a so called "service group". |
| PrAC | Pre-Award Domain Community | Peppol internal team to manage the pre-award assets. See https://peppol.org/learn-more/communities-and-work-groups/ |
|
PrACC
deprecated | Pre-Award Coordinating Community | The old term for PrAC. |
| QES | Qualified Electronic Signature | The highest assurance form of electronic signature under the EU eIDAS regulation. Referenced in some Peppol e-invoicing and tax compliance contexts. |
| REM | Registered Electronic Mail | An evidence record generated upon receipt of a Peppol business document, including an accurate timestamp. Used in Service Provider record keeping and SLA compliance. |
| RFC | Request for Change | A formal proposal to introduce a change to the Peppol Interoperability Framework, evaluated by the relevant CMB. Not to be confused with the IETF "Request for Comments" documents (also abbreviated RFC). |
| SBD | Standard Business Document | A generic XML envelope structure that defines a header (SBDH) and a payload. See also SBDH. See https://docs.peppol.eu/edelivery for the specification (Peppol Business Message Envelope). |
| SBDH | Standard Business Document Header | The header part inside the SBD. See https://docs.peppol.eu/edelivery for the specification (Peppol Business Message Envelope). |
| SLR | Service Level Requirement | A measurable requirement, such as timeliness or reliability targets, that Peppol Service Providers must meet. |
| SMK | Test version of the SML ('K' comes before 'L' like testing comes before production). Currently operated by EC. See https://docs.peppol.eu/edelivery for the specification. | |
| SML | Service Metadata Locator | Central Peppol service that modifies the DNS. Currently operated by EC. See https://docs.peppol.eu/edelivery for the specification. |
| SMP | Service Metadata Publisher | Distributed Peppol registry. Used to lookup participant endpoint URLs. See https://docs.peppol.eu/edelivery for the specification. See https://github.com/phax/phoss-smp for an Open Source implementation. |
| SP | Service Provider | A company or entity offering Peppol Services. |
| SPC | Service Provider Community | OpenPeppol internal group of Service Providers. See https://openpeppol.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SPC/overview for details. |
| SPID | Service Provider ID | A specific identifier of a specific Peppol SP based on the SPIS. |
| SPIS | Service Provider Identification Schema | An identifier Scheme to identify Peppol SPs for sole usage in the Peppol Network. |
| SPOG | Service Provider Operational Guideline | A supporting document to explain how to use a specfication and how it relates to other specifications. Issued by OpenPeppol. Has less rentention effect as the specification and is not sent out for member review. |
|
START
deprecated | Secure Trusted Asynchronous Reliable Transport | Legacy Peppol transport protocol, based on the Webservice stack. Was superseded by AS2 which was superseded by AS4. |
| TA | Tax Administration | A government agency responsible for the regulation, collection and audit of indirect tax (e.g. VAT) in a specific jurisdiction. Typically acts as C5 in the extended Peppol corner model. |
|
TCT
deprecated | TICC Codelist Team | Special team that takes care of the "Peppol Policy for the use of identifiers" as well as the codelists required for document exchange. This is now done within eDEC. |
|
TIA
deprecated | Transport Infrastructure Agreement | The contract between the Peppol user and the Peppol Authority. Since July 2022 this has been superseded by the "Peppol Agreement Framework". |
|
TICC
deprecated | Transport Infrastructure Coordinating Community | Peppol internal team to manage the technical assets.Now called EDEC. See https://peppol.org/learn-more/communities-and-work-groups/. |
| TDD | Tax Data Document | Tax data that was usually extracted from an electronic invoice. |
| TSR | Transport Statistics Report | An OpenPeppol statistics report on the number of transmitted documents. See https://docs.peppol.eu/edelivery/specs/reporting/tsr/ for the specification. See also EUSR. |
| TLS | Transport Layer Security | The cryptographic protocol used to secure transport-level connections in the Peppol Network (e.g. HTTPS for SMP, AP and the PD). Successor to SSL. |
| UBL | Universal Business Language | An OASIS standard that defines certain XML based document types used in Peppol and the EN. |
| U-NAPTR | URI-enabled NAPTR | A specific NAPTR variant defined in RFC 4848 that resolves directly to a URI. Used in the Peppol DNS lookup chain for SMP discovery. |
| ViDA | VAT in the Digital Age | An EU Council Directive amending the VAT Directive to introduce digital reporting requirements (DRR) and mandatory e-invoicing for intra-EU B2B transactions. There is also a Peppol ViDA Pilot project. |