What is a E-Document in Business Central?

The Business Central framework for sending and receiving structured electronic invoices in formats such as PEPPOL BIS, XRechnung, and Factur-X.

An e-document in Business Central is a structured electronic business document, most commonly an e-invoice: XML data that systems read directly, instead of a PDF a human has to interpret. The E-Documents framework, introduced with the 2023 release wave 2 and expanded since, is BC's standard machinery for creating, sending, receiving, and processing them.

Setup revolves around an E-Document Service, which combines a format and a transport. Formats come as extensions: PEPPOL BIS 3.0, XRechnung for Germany, Factur-X for France, OIOUBL for Denmark, and others. Outbound, you attach the service to a document sending profile: posting a sales invoice then generates the XML and hands it to the connector. Connectors from Microsoft and ISVs link BC to access points and national platforms (for example Pagero or Avalara).

Inbound, received e-invoices arrive as e-document records that BC can match to purchase orders or turn into purchase invoice drafts automatically, with the structured data eliminating OCR errors entirely. The driver behind all this is regulation: Germany has required businesses to be able to receive e-invoices since 2025, France follows in 2026, and the EU's ViDA initiative pushes in the same direction everywhere.

The framework only helps when the trading partner sends structured data. For the suppliers who still send plain PDF invoices, Zentriq Document Capture extracts the data with AI and creates draft purchase invoices for review.

Related terms

• EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), A standard for exchanging business documents (POs, invoices, shipping notices) between trading partners electronically.
• Incoming Documents, A Business Central feature that stores received files like vendor invoices and turns them into documents or journal lines, keeping the file linked to the posted result.
• Document Capture (OCR), The process of extracting structured data from documents (invoices, receipts) using AI or OCR technology.
• Purchase Invoice, A document recording a vendor's bill for goods or services received, used for accounts payable processing in Business Central.

How Zentriq helps

Zentriq's AI tools automate many of the manual processes around e-document in Business Central. Learn about the Zentriq Agent or try Zentriq PunchOut to see how AI simplifies procurement in BC.