Description
Brightfern turns your WooCommerce orders into compliant EN 16931 structured e-invoices (Peppol BIS
Billing 3.0), with three core capabilities:
- It also receives. Not just sending — Brightfern receives inbound e-invoices into a WooCommerce inbox and
matches them to your orders. Being able to receive is mandatory for all French businesses from
September 2026, even before they must issue. - It doesn’t lock you to one network. Brightfern is provider-agnostic: bring your own certified Access
Point. No per-document markup, no lock-in. - It validates before it sends. A pre-flight gate checks your invoice against the Peppol rules,
confirms the buyer is actually reachable on the network (SMP lookup), and validates their VAT number and
name (VIES) — so “it will arrive and be accepted”, instead of finding out days later.
Correct on the hard cases: mixed VAT rates, discounts, reverse charge, intra-community supply, exempt
small businesses, and cent-accurate rounding.
Free vs Pro
- Free: generate the e-invoice (and credit notes) from an order, run the full validation + recipient
- VAT checks, download the XML, and receive inbound e-invoices into the WooCommerce inbox.
- Pro: transmit outbound over Peppol, delivery/status tracking, and national formats.
Compliance notes
EN 16931 is the semantic model; Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 is the UBL syntax used for transmission. National
systems such as Poland’s KSeF are separate from Peppol and are on the roadmap — Brightfern is architected for
them from day one. Brightfern integrates a certified Access Point provider’s API; it is not itself a certified
Access Point.
External services
This plugin’s free pre-flight validation and inbound-receiving features connect to the following third-party
and public infrastructure services. No invoice line items, prices, or customer personal data beyond what is
listed below are ever sent.
- VIES (VAT Information Exchange System), operated by the European Commission. Used to confirm that the
buyer’s VAT number is valid and to check the registered business name, as part of the free pre-flight
validation shown before you download an invoice. Only the buyer’s VAT number is sent, and only when you
trigger validation for that order. Terms of use,
Privacy Policy. - Peppol SML/SMP network, the DNS- and HTTP-based lookup infrastructure of the Peppol e-delivery network,
governed by OpenPeppol and built on the European Commission’s eDelivery building block. Used to confirm the
buyer’s Peppol participant identifier (VAT/company id + electronic address scheme) is registered and can
receive documents. Only that identifier is sent, as part of the free pre-flight validation; no invoice
content is transmitted. OpenPeppol. - Storecove, one of several certified Peppol Access Points you can configure under
WooCommerce E-Invoicing. Brightfern is provider-agnostic and ships Storecove’s API base URL only as a
pre-filled example — you may point it at any certified Access Point, or leave the bundled offline Mock
provider selected to use the plugin without any external service. When Storecove (or any configured
provider) is selected, the plugin polls it for inbound e-invoices addressed to you (free tier) and, on the
Pro tier, transmits outbound invoices through it. Storecove,
Privacy Policy.
Installation
- Install and activate the plugin (WooCommerce required).
- Go to WooCommerce E-Invoicing and fill in your seller identity (legal name, VAT number, Peppol
electronic address, address, IBAN). - Choose your Access Point provider and enter its credentials (or keep Mock to try it offline).
- Pick the order status that should generate an invoice (default: Completed).
- (Receiving) Set a webhook secret and paste the shown webhook URL into your provider, or enable
polling.
FAQ
-
Do I need to be a certified Peppol Access Point?
-
No. You connect your own certified provider; Brightfern speaks to it through a provider-agnostic interface.
-
Which countries are supported?
-
Belgium (Peppol BIS UBL) is fully supported. France works over Peppol today; the domestic Factur-X PDF
hybrid is on the roadmap. Germany (XRechnung) and Poland (KSeF) are planned. -
Can it receive invoices, not just send?
-
Yes — that’s a core feature. Received documents appear in a WooCommerce inbox and are matched to orders.
Reviews
There are no reviews for this plugin.
Contributors & Developers
“Brightfern E-Invoicing for WooCommerce” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
Translate “Brightfern E-Invoicing for WooCommerce” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
0.1.5
- Added Dutch, French and German translations (in addition to English).
Set the site or user language under Settings General (or your user
profile) to switch.
0.1.4
- Text domain now matches the assigned WordPress.org slug,
brightfern-e-invoicing-for-woocommerce. - Reworded the description to drop comparative language about other plugins.
- Documented the third-party/public services this plugin calls (VIES, the
Peppol SML/SMP network, and the configurable Access Point provider) in a
new “External services” section below.
0.1.3
- Fixed the settings form: a naming mismatch introduced during the rename made
every save silently discard the submitted values (and clear stored ones). - Added a Payment means (BT-81) setting: credit transfer or SEPA credit transfer.
- Fixed the licensing menu wiring so account/opt-in screens render on the
settings page instead of a permissions error. - Inbound XML is now parsed with network access disabled (LIBXML_NONET).
- Corrected the Contributors header to the actual WordPress.org account.
- Removed the Plugin URI header: it duplicated the Author URI, which
WordPress.org rejects. There is no separate product page yet.
0.1.2
- Providers reference the premium send types by fully-qualified name, so the
free build carries no imports pointing at the stripped directory.
0.1.1
- Outbound Peppol transmission is now excluded from the WordPress.org build
rather than disabled at runtime, per plugin directory guideline 5. - Receiving inbound e-invoices moved from Pro to free.
- Uninstall cleanup now also clears the polling cron on a normal uninstall.
0.1.0
- Initial MVP: EN 16931 mapping, Peppol BIS UBL serialization, three-layer pre-flight validation
(business rules + optional XSD + optional schematron), SMP recipient lookup, VIES VAT check,
provider-agnostic send + receive (Storecove reference provider + offline mock), admin inbox, order
metabox, settings.