Majority agreed that an invoice status message should be sent from C4 to C1 in order to let senders know if the invoice was received, accepted and/or rejected.

• Peppol are looking at mandating an Invoice Response Message because they see the value in this. They haven't in the past because C4 may not be able to generate a meaningful IRM.
• Certainty of invoices being delivered is a huge incentive for senders to work within Peppol.
• Need discoverability for this to happen. C4 needs to know that C1 can receive and accept a response message.
• Rejection notification to include a meaningful message.

Need to be confident that an invoice will be delivered if it complies with the standards (unless there is a network error).

• Understanding what the industry would like and what the AU/NZ government are prepared to accommodate may be quite different. Trying to reach an 80/20 compromise.
• This standard needs to have specifications and additional fields that can be added.
• The business transactions between the buyer and seller is the primary activity. The message standard needs to support that, not the other way around. In which case the standard needs to be flexible enough to accommodate potential variations in that business transaction.
• It should not be left up to C1 to accommodate all the potential variations in how the agreed business transaction between a buyer and seller is implemented.
• Buyers need to articulate clearly the data requirements and business rules by which they can accept e-invoices. And sellers need to articulate how they can send e-invoices, and those two activities need to be agreed upon by C1 and C4.

Encouraged everyone on the call to reply to the ATO and MBIE's discussion paper individually. ABSIA will be creating a draft reply for everyone to use.

Meetings will continue with software industry participants only (including non-ABSIA members) and scheduled on a fortnightly basis. Meetings will only actually be held if there is something concrete to be discussed. External speakers may be invited to present or participate (e.g. ATO/MBIE), as required.

Some members have offered to share their submissions to the ATO/MBIE discussion paper on receiver requirements and response messages. These documents should be redacted to remove anything commercial-in-confidence and sent to Maggie who will collect and distribute. Please do this prior to C.O.B. Tuesday 14 July, so we can distribute ahead of the ATO/MBIE Service Provider Forum on Thursday 16 July.

We had an extensive discussion on interoperability and the role of participants in the four corner model. Paul Simons described Belgium's experience in working across the four corners to get agreements on simple standardisations that benefit all - e.g. not including "PO" at the beginning of a PO Number and removing punctuation from identifiers (ABN, VAT, NZBN). ABSIA will distribute sample PDF and ask participants to convert to AUNZ BIS 3.0 and send to a new Peppol ID (TBC). ABSIA will then collate the responses and share different methods of implementing, as the opportunity to drive a discussion similar to that held in Belgium.

TC434 Invoice Committee (a part of CEN which developed the EuroNorm invoice model - EN16931) are evaluating permitting XML as an attachment type. This could resolve many of the industry specific requirements by allowing additional information in the invoice which does not impact accounting system / ERP processing, nor require schematron validation. This has not been officially discussed, but if it moves forward the process will take 1-2 years. 

Encourage everyone to read the Peppol International Invoice (PINT - sent in a previous email) and Global Interoperability Framework (GIF) documents that have been recently published. PINT work will impact A-NZ especially when trading internationally. GIF has recommendations and best practices including information on invoice messaging and response messaging.

Encouraged everyone to read the new TIA and policy documents. Slides and notes from the 30 June OpenPeppol Service Providers meeting are on Slack and contain more detail on this process. Notably, the proposed notice of termination for the existing TIA is 31 October, thereby expiring the agreements six months later on 31 March 2021. 

Discussion and updates provided on continued ATO, MBIE and Peppol meetings. 

General discussion on the PINT (Peppol International Invoice) and how it may work in parallel with existing specifications. ABSIA will aim to organise a presentation from PINT working group lead Georg Birgisson for those who are interested to learn more.

Discussion around how AU/NZ should best implement KYC. There is industry support for myGovID to be extended for B2B use. AU/NZ could learn from Singapore's approach to KYC and the use of CorpPass. Noted that KYC currently applies to both senders and receivers.

Belgium and Singapore have implemented "Peppol First Commitment" and "Peppol Ready" respectively as ways to drive adoption with accounting and similar software providers. For Belgium, this means if a receiver is registered with Peppol, the transactions would default to being sent through the Peppol network. In Singapore, the Peppol Authority is accrediting software providers and their implementations of Peppol. There was a discussion around whether AU/NZ should take a similar approach. It was understood that while this would be useful for driving Peppol adoption, it should not be mandatory as there are other standards that consumers can choose. 

Discussions continuing from the ATO/MBIE Service Provider meeting held earlier that morning including interoperability and PINT.

Interoperability issues exist in two places - in the C2 - C3 AS4 message exchange, and also in the interpretation of the BIS. Discussions focussed on AS4 message exchange and how to solve these problems locally including:

• ABSIA hosting a list of endpoints that are interested in interoperability testing with others on the network.
• Creating something to Singapore's 0195:SGECHOTEST01 endpoint where you can send a message and a confirmation email is returned.
• Need for discipline and governance over the network while keeping in mind that it is still maturing. 
• OpenPeppol is planning to release Testbed v2 with more detailed AS4 compliance requirements that may address many of the problems.

Either way, there is the need to have these discussions with the service provider community, ATO/MBIE and Peppol. Rick Harvey will be following OpenPeppol up about when the new testbeds are expected to be launched.

Following on from the above, please send any AS4 interoperability issues to Rick Harvey or Maggie Leese.

Discussion about the PINT and how this should apply to businesses that do not operate globally and therefore do not need to send or receive international invoices. Amongst the group it is still a bit early to come to a conclusion on this but the conversation led to better understanding of the issues PINT solves from a global perspective.

While there was nothing new to discuss about the new TIA, it was noted that the old agreements and new agreements will be operating in parallel for some time. 

Mentioned the Australian Government e-invoicing mandate and that the exact details of this are not yet known. New Zealand may have a similar mandate pending the outcome of their upcoming election. 

Discussed items, mainly the new TIA, from the recent Peppol Service Provider Community Meeting (these slides are available through confluence). We understand that Peppol are aiming to give the required six months notice of termination of existing agreements by the end of the year, which would mean new agreements must be signed by 30 June 2021. In the Peppol meeting, there was significant debate around PA specific requirements and the impact that will have on interoperability due to competing requirements across the world. Peppol are looking to find commonality across different agreements. 

Provided an update on the work of the ATO and MBIE's invoice content and status working group. It was noted that a final draft of the invoice content paper should be released over the next few weeks. 

Discussed the impact of Access Point Providers in delivering services to their customers that are beyond the scope of their responsibility as an Access Point leading to confusion about where Peppol governance applies and does not apply. This is particularly relevant with the introduction of PINT which has requirements placed upon corners 1 and 4 (and software developers that fulfil this role or sell to those that do) but which can only impose requirements on Access Points. 

Rick Harvey gave a presentations on the work of the DDTS working group and outlined the changes that will be required to support PINT. Rick noted that this is different to other Peppol migrations as it involves changes to both the messaging level and the document level. While no decisions have been made, the key proposed dates are at least 12 months in the future with the earliest being November 2021. 

It was noted that there are no regular meetings open to everyone within any Peppol community to raise issues. Suggestion to request this via the operating office and this will be taken to the eDelivery Community for consideration. There was also the opportunity to discuss this with Martin Mane who is the eDEC leader. 

The work on the best practice guides is mostly complete with the invoice content guide now available on the A-NZ Peppol GitHub. 

It was raised that there should be a more formal process for resolving issues between Access Points. Currently these are dealt with between the Access Points but the issues are not raised with the ATO or MBIE. A process for this should be suggested to the ATO/MBIE. 

PINT documentation should be available for review soon. This includes in depth migration and impact analyses. The earliest starting date for PINT at the moment is May 2021 with an expected 12 month period before it becomes mandatory. Paul Simons noted that there was an agreement for PINT to be pronounced as if it rhymes with "mint".

Australia and New Zealand are currently consulting on which rules Australia and New Zealand could look to adopt from the November release of the Peppol BIS. One rule that has changed is only allowing one type of payment means to be specified which does not match the way businesses operate in Australia and New Zealand. It was suggested that if A-NZ want to change, then we should change towards what has been discussed with PINT as it is easier for A-NZ to do this when compared to Europe.

The rules are being review around the membership of the monthly Peppol Service Provider meetings making it easier for software providers to join. While they are quite lenient at the moment, you are technically meant to be a service provider to participate in these meetings. It was recommended that those who are interested should request to join this group.

It was recommended that if you are not already taking part in the Post-Award Domain Community (PoAC) and are interested in keeping up to date with documentation, you should raise a ticket with the help desk. It was noted that new Peppol members are not automatically added to this group.

This meeting covered Treasury's discussion paper on options for mandatory adoption of electronic invoicing by businesses. Discussions surrounded the questions outlined in the paper and participants shared their perspectives. 

It was agreed that a mandate, no matter what option is chosen, would assist in increasing awareness about e-invoicing amongst different business types.

The discussions from this meeting helped to shape ABSIA's submission. It was pleasing to see that many participants were on the same page and that ABSIA was hearing similar views to this consultation across the industry.