Identifying Australian businesses on the Peppol network

About the Peppol Directory

The Peppol DirectoryExternal Link contains information about every entity in the world that is registered on the Peppol network and their receiving capabilities. The directory is administered by OpenPeppol.

Use the directory to see if one of your trading partners is connected to the Peppol network by doing a simple text search. If you can't find them using their trading name, use their ABN (Australian business number) as Australian businesses typically use their ABNs as their Peppol participant ID.

Note:

• Only receivers’ details are published – if a business can only send they may not be listed, but publishing receiver details to the directory is mandatory in Australia.
• Always complete appropriate identity and ‘know your customer’ checks before transacting with any new trading partner, regardless of their registration status on the Peppol network.

More about Peppol participant IDs

Every business on the Peppol Directory is registered using a unique participant identifier with the following 3 components: 

• identifier scheme – 'iso6523-actorid-upis'
• International Code Designator (ICD) valueExternal Link – '0151' is the ICD for the ABN which is used by most Australian businesses, but some may use a different ICD especially if they also trade overseas
• unique identifier denoted by the ICD (typically an ABN)
  • for example, the Participant ID for the ATO is:
    'iso6523-actorid-upis::0151:51824753556'
    (identifier scheme::ICD value:unique identifier).

Bulk look-ups of Australian businesses on the Peppol network

There are a range of options for you to identify if your trading partners can receive Peppol eInvoices.

Using free publicly available tools

Many commercial Peppol service providers provide free public look-ups allowing you to upload details of your trading partners to check if they're on the network. Some of these are listed below. Consider any disclaimers or privacy policies before using them:

• Payreq – Peppol LookupExternal Link
• eInvoicing.com Peppol lookupExternal Link
• Ozedi – Peppol lookupExternal Link

Many Peppol service providers offer an option to help you identify your registered trading partners and onboard them.

Extracting data from the Peppol Directory

These steps show you how to filter out of the Peppol Directory all the Australian businesses using an ABN as their Peppol ID ('0151' ICD).

Step 1: Download and open the directory

• Go to the Peppol DirectoryExternal Link.
• In the grey footer, select Participant IDs CSV (comma-separated values) – a CSV file will download.
• Open the CSV file in Excel or a similar spreadsheet application.
• Most spreadsheets are limited to one million rows – the Peppol Directory may exceed this capacity (you may need to split it into multiple files to access all the data).
• Save the file as a Macro-Enabled Workbook for best performance.

Step 2: Separate the ABNs

The downloaded spreadsheet will contain a single column list of Participant IDs. You will need to split the identifier into its components to separate out the ABNs:

• Select Column A and go to the Data ribbon.
• Select Text to Columns – the Convert Text to Columns Wizard will open.
• Ensure Delimited is checked then click Next.
• Check Other and type ‘:’ (a colon) in the box to the right then click Next.
• Click Finish.

The data will split into separate columns:

• Column C will show the type of identifier (ICD) and Column D will show registered participants' unique identifiers.
• Filter Column C by ICD '0151' (the value may show as '151') to display only ABNs in Column D.
• Save your list.

Compare Column D to your vendor data, or against the Australian Business RegisterExternal Link to find out more about who is listed – for example you can filter by postcode to see who is local to you.

Build an API to extract data

The directory can also be queried using a public REST APIExternal Link.

More Peppol functions

There are more resources and capabilities available to help you use the Peppol network.

You can download the directory's full BusinessCards CSV. This file is large and may require a powerful computer to process. The result includes all data fields associated with entities in the Peppol Directory. You can apply specific filtering to identify a range of Peppol participants, such as all entities:

• with an 'AU' country code (that is, all businesses located in Australia)
• in the Peppol network that can receive an 'AU' eInvoice (including entities outside of Australia).

Peppol practical participant searchExternal Link displays more information about individual entities, such as the access point they’re using.

Free dashboards such as ionite.netExternal Link provide high-level statistics like the number of registered entities in each country.

Some digital service providers offer Peppol statistics and data manipulation as a paid service.