UK mandatory e-invoicing from April 2029: what to do now

From April 2029, VAT-registered businesses in the UK will have to issue and receive invoices to other businesses as structured e-invoices, sent over the Peppol network. A PDF attached to an email is expected to stop counting. Nothing changes for your invoices today, but the records you keep between now and then decide how painful the switch is.

What HMRC has actually confirmed

The plan is now official policy, not a consultation idea. HMRC's policy paper E-invoicing requirements, published on 28 October 2026, says the requirements "will have effect from April 2029". The enabling powers go into the Finance Bill 2026-27, and the technical detail (the exact format, the data fields, the exemptions) will follow in secondary legislation.

Three points in the paper matter for a small business:

• Who is in scope. VAT-registered persons, plus anyone who has to receive a VAT invoice to recover input tax. Public bodies that are not VAT registered are covered too, because they buy from VAT-registered suppliers.
• The network. "Peppol will become the core interoperability framework for UK e-invoicing." Peppol is the network the EU's e-invoicing plans already lean on, which we covered in our post on the EU's ViDA e-invoicing rules.
• Exemptions are still open. The paper says HMRC will be able to set exemptions, but it does not list them yet.

The paper also gives the money behind it: HMRC expects to spend about £19 million building it, and it forecasts extra tax of £160 million a year by 2030-31 as fewer invoices go missing or get reported wrongly.

What an e-invoice is, and why your PDF won't be one

An e-invoice under the new rules is a data file, not a picture of a document. Today the rules are relaxed. VAT Notice 700/63 says an electronic invoice "may be a structured format such as XML or an unstructured format such as PDF", as long as your customer agrees to receive it electronically. That is why most small UK businesses email a PDF and call it done.

From 2029 the definition tightens. The policy paper says "structured digital invoices are the standard", and KPMG's reading of the roadmap is plain: PDFs, Word files, images and invoices typed into an email body won't satisfy the mandate. The invoice will travel as machine-readable data from your software, through a Peppol access point, to your customer's access point and into their software.

KPMG also reports that the UK is choosing a four-corner model with no clearance step at first. In plain terms, HMRC won't approve each invoice before it reaches your client, which is how some countries (Italy, Saudi Arabia) run their systems. Your invoice still goes straight to the customer. It just goes in a different format and over a different route.

The timeline from now to April 2029

The dates below come from the HMRC paper and KPMG's summary of the roadmap. Treat the middle steps as the plan, since secondary legislation can slip.

KPMG lists what looks likely to sit outside the mandate: most sales to consumers, sales to buyers who are not VAT registered, some cross-border supplies and people who are digitally excluded. If you sell only to the public, you may not need Peppol at all. If you invoice other businesses, plan on it.

Who this affects, and who it doesn't

The line is VAT registration, not company size. You must register for VAT once your taxable turnover passes £90,000 over the last 12 months, and some businesses register below that by choice so they can reclaim VAT on costs. Both groups are in scope.

For a typical service business, that means:

• A VAT-registered agency or consultancy billing other companies: in scope for every invoice it sends, and it must be able to receive e-invoices from its own suppliers.
• A sole trader under the threshold who isn't registered: outside the sending rules as the policy stands. You don't charge VAT, so your clients have no VAT to reclaim from your invoices, and an ordinary invoice still does the job.
• A studio that sells only to individuals: likely outside the mandate for those sales, based on KPMG's reading.

What to get right this year

You can't send a Peppol invoice yet in any required sense, but you can fix the things that make a format switch hard. Structured invoicing punishes messy data, because every field has to be filled the same way every time.

1. Check your invoices carry every required detail now. The gov.uk list of what an invoice must include covers a unique number, your name and address, the customer's name and address, a description, the supply date, the invoice date, the amounts and the VAT. If any of these live in your head instead of on the invoice, fix that first.
2. Keep one numbering sequence. Gaps and duplicates are the first thing an automated system rejects.
3. Store client details properly. Each business client should have a legal name, address and VAT number saved once, not retyped per invoice.
4. Stop editing sent invoices. Corrections should go out as credit notes with their own numbers. That habit is already the rule for VAT, and it is the only way corrections will work in a structured system.
5. Pick accounting software that will support Peppol. Most UK businesses will send e-invoices through their accounting software or an access point it partners with. Ask your provider what its 2029 plan is, and keep your sales data somewhere that exports cleanly.

If any of your invoices already go through Peppol for a public sector client, you have a head start. For everything that touches your own VAT position, check it with your accountant.

How Delivvo keeps your invoices ready for the switch

Delivvo gets your invoice data clean and consistent now, so moving to e-invoices later is a software setting rather than a clean-up project. It isn't a Peppol access point, and it doesn't claim to be. Its job is the client side of billing: quotes, contracts, deposits, invoices and payments that all sit on one client record.

Here is how that works in practice:

• Your business identity is set once. Your legal name, address and VAT number go into the business profile and print on every invoice and credit note, with a Tax Invoice title and reverse charge wording where they apply.
• Numbers run in sequence, in your format. Delivvo numbers every invoice and credit note in order, so there are no gaps to explain.
• Corrections never overwrite. A sent invoice can be voided (it keeps its number) or credited with its own credit note number. "Correct this invoice" voids it and opens a new draft with the same lines, linked both ways.
• Exports your accountant can use. The invoice export produces a CSV of invoices and credit notes, one row per line with tax and totals, laid out for QuickBooks Online, Xero and Zoho Books to import. Zoho Books can also connect directly from the Integrations page.
• Every document checks itself. Each invoice carries a verification code that anyone can check at delivvo.io/verify.

Clients pay through your own Stripe, PayPal or Square account, and Delivvo takes 0% of the payment. See how invoices, tax details and credit notes work on the invoices and tax page.

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