Troubleshoot Peppol Lookups and Endpoints

This article covers the lookups you run while preparing a customer or vendor: entering a Peppol endpoint, searching the public directory, verifying that an address can receive documents, and fetching official company data. These fire from the customer and vendor cards and belong to neither sending nor receiving.

The Peppol endpoint "value" is not valid.

Use scheme:value, for example 0208:0802046676 (Belgian enterprise number) or 9925:BE0802046676 (Belgian VAT).

Cause: The value is not in scheme:value form.

Solution: Enter the scheme and the identifier separated by a colon. Common schemes are 0208 for the Belgian enterprise number, 9925 for Belgian VAT, 0088 for GLN, plus the Netherlands KvK and OIN, France SIRET and Germany Leitweg-ID. Or choose Find in Peppol Directory and pick the party, which fills in a correctly formed value.

Peppol Directory lookup failed: reason

Three near-identical messages exist, and which one you get says where it failed: Peppol Directory lookup failed from a party check, The Peppol Directory lookup failed: from an endpoint check on a card, and Peppol Directory search failed: from the search page. The cause and the fix are the same for all three.

Cause: The public directory could not be reached or returned an error.

Solution: Confirm that outbound calls are allowed for the extension and that your firewall or tenant allows directory.peppol.eu. The related message names the host:

Could not reach the Peppol Directory. Check that outbound HTTP to directory.peppol.eu is allowed for this extension.

Directory lookups are not required to send. If the directory is down, use Verify Recipient, which resolves the address on the network instead.

identifier is not published in the Peppol Directory, so it has no document types to show.

Cause: You chose Show Peppol Details or Show Details for a party that is not in the public directory. There is nothing to list, so the action stops.

Solution: Ask the party for their participant identifier, then use Verify Recipient, which resolves the address on the network rather than in the directory.

identifier is not published in the Peppol Directory.

That does not mean it is unreachable: directory registration is optional, and many companies receive invoices without appearing in it. Use Verify Recipient to check actual deliverability.

This one is a message, not an error — Check Peppol Endpoint is advisory and never blocks anything.

Cause: The party has not registered in the public directory.

Solution: This is usually not a problem. Ask the party for their participant identifier, enter it, and use Verify Recipient — that is the authoritative answer on whether a document would be delivered.

identifier does not resolve on the Peppol network

so a document sent to it would not be delivered.

Cause: Verify Recipient could not resolve the address. Unlike a directory miss, this one matters.

Solution: Confirm the identifier with the party. If they insist it is right, the problem is on their access point's side and they need to raise it with their provider.

This participant has not published any document types.

Cause: The party is in the directory but has published nothing, so the directory cannot tell you what it accepts.

Solution: Use Verify Recipient, and ask the party directly which document types they receive — this matters most for self-billed documents, which need a registration separate from ordinary invoicing.

No Peppol endpoint is set.

Cause: You chose Check Peppol Endpoint or Show Peppol Details on a card whose endpoint is blank.

Solution: Fill in the endpoint first, or choose Find in Peppol Directory to search by name.

The variant from Verify Recipient reads No Peppol endpoint is set for this party., and verification failures come back as Recipient verification failed: *reason* — check the endpoint value, then that the network is reachable.

The identifier value contains characters that cannot be put in a URL.

This is refused rather than sent, because a malformed request is accepted by the platform and comes back with the wrong documents.

Cause: The endpoint contains characters that would break the lookup request.

Solution: Correct the endpoint on the card. The refusal is deliberate — a malformed request would return plausible but wrong results rather than an error.

VIES lookups are switched off.

Turn on "Look Up Official Data (VIES)" on the Recommand E-Invoicing Setup page first.

Cause: The official data lookup is off, which is how it ships, because it contacts a host outside Recommand.

Solution: Switch on Look Up Official Data (VIES) on Recommand E-Invoicing Setup, under Official Data Lookup, and make sure ec.europa.eu is reachable.

The related message names the host:

Could not reach the VIES service. Check that outbound HTTP to ec.europa.eu is allowed for this extension.

The VIES lookup failed: reason

Cause: The register was reached but the lookup itself failed. This is the wrapper you see; the underlying reason follows the colon.

Solution: Try again later. VIES is a public service with no availability guarantee, and Microsoft's own VAT validation carries the same caveat.

Official lookup is only available for Belgian parties.

Cause: The party resolves to a country other than Belgium.

Solution: Nothing here. Standard Business Central offers its own VIES check, the EU VAT Reg. No. Validation Service on Service Connections, which validates VAT numbers across member states.

There is nothing to look this party up by yet.

Fill in either the Peppol Endpoint — use Find in Peppol Directory to search by name — or the VAT Registration No. The official register is queried by enterprise number, which is derived from one of those two.

Cause: The party has neither identifier, so no enterprise number can be derived.

Solution: Fill in one of the two and run the lookup again.

VIES reports that BE number is not a valid VAT number.

Cause: The register does not recognize the number.

Solution: Nothing has been changed. Confirm the number with the party — a typo in a VAT number will also stop invoices being sent.

You may also get a valid number with nothing to copy: VIES confirms BE number is valid but returned no name or address to copy. Some member states withhold those details.

The bulk fill left parties empty

See Fill Peppol Endpoints in Bulk. Every party gets an outcome on the Peppol Endpoint Fill Results page — Not registered and No identifier are the two that need a person, and neither is an error.

Still stuck? Send it to support

If none of the causes above match, let the app collect what support needs to see:

Choose the Search icon, enter Recommand E-Invoicing Setup, and then choose the related link.
Choose Send to Support. Business Central opens an e-mail to support@vangeldersolutions.be with a support package attached and the environment, version and warnings already filled in. Describe what you did, what you expected and what happened, then send it.
No e-mail account in Business Central? The package is downloaded instead and your mail program opens - attach the downloaded RecommandSupport_….json to the message.

The support package contains the app's setup without the API secret, the recent log, the job queue state, the e-document services and the warnings the app derived. It contains no document contents, amounts, IBANs or party names; account numbers and e-mail addresses in free text are masked. You can open the file first and read exactly what you are sending.

Prefer to look yourself? Download Support Package on the same page gives you the file without sending anything - the warnings list at the top is the first thing support reads.