# Peppol Ordering: BIS Order Only 3.3, Ordering 3.3, and Order Response > Peppol carries purchase orders as well as invoices. The ordering profiles have existed for years and adoption stayed thin, because no mandate requires them and ordering needs both parties to move. What exists, who actually uses it, and why. Peppol defines ordering profiles including BIS Order Only 3.3, BIS Ordering 3.3, and Order Response 3.3. They use the same network and identifiers as Peppol invoicing. Adoption is thin because no government mandates them, and unlike invoicing, ordering requires the buyer to move first. Everyone knows Peppol carries invoices. Far fewer people know it was built for procurement first, and that the ordering documents are still there, fully specified, and largely unused. ## The profiles | Profile | What it covers | | --- | --- | | **BIS Order Only 3.3** | Buyer sends an order. No response expected. The simplest case. | | **BIS Ordering 3.3** | Order plus a formal Order Response, so the seller can accept, reject, or propose changes line by line. | | **BIS Advanced Ordering 3.0** | Adds order change and cancellation, for buyers automating procurement progressively. | | **BIS Order Agreement 3.0** | An auxiliary profile that feeds less formalised purchasing back into the procurement system so spend stays controlled and visible. | | **BIS Despatch Advice 3.1** | The shipment notification, equivalent to an EDI 856 or an EDIFACT DESADV. | The documents are UBL 2.1, the same syntax as a Peppol invoice, and they move over the same four-corner AS4 network using the same participant identifiers. If you are already connected to Peppol for invoicing, the transport work for ordering is done. ## Where it is genuinely used Ordering adoption clusters in public procurement, and it got there through purchasing power rather than legislation. - **Norway and Denmark** drove early adoption through the public sector, which used its position as a customer to require electronic ordering from suppliers. - **Finland** began moving public procurement to e-orders in 2024, the first market in Europe to do so at scale. - **The Nordic Smart Government initiative** completed a pilot on harmonising e-orders with e-invoices in 2022, with Peppol as the infrastructure. - **The UK NHS**, through its eProcurement Strategy, requires Peppol messaging from suppliers covering orders, despatch advices, and invoices. The pattern is consistent: a large buyer with procurement leverage mandates it in contracts. No tax authority is involved anywhere. ## Why adoption stayed thin Two structural reasons, and neither is about the technology. ### There is no fiscal reason to mandate an order Every e-invoicing mandate in Europe is VAT law. An invoice creates a tax liability that an authority can audit, which gives it standing to dictate the format. A purchase order creates nothing taxable. It is a statement of intent. So the mechanism that produced universal invoice adoption cannot reach ordering, and this is by design rather than oversight. ViDA, the EU's big e-invoicing reform running to 2030 and 2035, is scoped to invoices for exactly this reason. ### Invoicing is one-sided, ordering is two-sided This is the part that explains the adoption curve. You can adopt e-invoicing unilaterally. You start issuing structured invoices, and your counterparty is legally obliged to be able to receive them. Their readiness is somebody else's legal problem. Ordering does not work that way. You cannot receive a Peppol order unless your customer chooses to send one. Every connection needs both parties to have moved, and there is no law making either of them move first. That is a coordination problem, and coordination problems without a forcing function tend to stay unsolved. The result is visible in mandated markets right now. In Belgium, where every B2B invoice has been a structured document on a managed network since January 2026, the purchase order that started the transaction is still, very often, a PDF attached to an email. ## What this means practically **If you sell to Nordic or Finnish public bodies, or to the NHS**, Peppol ordering is likely already a contractual requirement, and it is worth checking your obligations rather than assuming invoicing covers it. **If you sell to private-sector European businesses**, you will see very few Peppol orders. Your inbound order flow will keep arriving as PDFs, emails, spreadsheets, portal exports, and EDIFACT, and that is not going to be fixed by a regulation. **If you already run Peppol for invoices**, adding inbound order support is a smaller job than it looks, since identity and transport are solved. The work is mapping the UBL Order into whatever your order pipeline expects. ## The honest summary Peppol ordering is well specified, technically sound, and mostly empty. It is not a failed standard so much as a standard with no forcing function behind it. Invoicing is one-sided, so a mandate could move it. Ordering is two-sided, so no mandate has tried. Which leaves inbound order automation exactly where it has always been: a document interpretation problem rather than a compliance problem. That is what [OrderSync](/) does, reading orders in whatever shape they turn up and posting them into the ERP as structured orders. ## Sources - [Peppol BIS Order Only 3.3](https://docs.peppol.eu/poacc/upgrade-3/profiles/3-order-only/), OpenPeppol - [Peppol BIS Ordering 3.3](https://docs.peppol.eu/poacc/upgrade-3/profiles/28-ordering/), OpenPeppol - [Peppol BIS Advanced Ordering 3.0](https://docs.peppol.eu/poacc/upgrade-3/profiles/65-advanced-ordering/), OpenPeppol ## Related reading - [European e-invoicing mandate timeline](/e-invoicing) - [Peppol is not e-invoicing](/guides/e-invoicing/peppol-vs-e-invoicing-mandates) - [UBL vs X12 vs EDIFACT](/guides/e-invoicing/ubl-vs-x12-vs-edifact) - [EDI Inspector](/edi-inspector), free in-browser EDI file reader