Receive Singapore InvoiceNow Invoices in Xero & QuickBooks

To receive Singapore InvoiceNow invoices in Xero and QuickBooks (or MYOB), you need four things in place: an IMDA-accredited Access Point Provider or InvoiceNow-Ready Solution Provider, a Singapore Peppol Participant ID registered in the form 0195:SGUEN<UEN>, that provider connected to your accounting software, and the inbound delivery configured so PINT-SG invoices arrive as draft bills for the bookkeeper to review, code, and approve. Storecove is the most common bridge into Xero. Link4 is the most common bridge into QuickBooks Online. MYOB has InvoiceNow built into its Singapore product natively. Those are descriptive defaults from what is currently in the market, not endorsements; the IMDA-accredited list is broader and worth working through against your own criteria.

Mandate dates (newly voluntary GST registrants from 1 Nov 2025, newly mandatory from 1 Apr 2026) sit in the linked overview; this article assumes you have decided to enable receiving and need to set it up. Even SMBs outside the issuance dates are being pulled toward enabling receiving by their supplier base — a customer who has gone live with InvoiceNow expects structured invoices, not a request for a PDF.

What an Access Point Provider and an IRSP actually do

An Access Point Provider is the gateway that connects your business to the Peppol network. On the receiving side, it accepts inbound PINT-SG XML on your behalf, validates it, and delivers the parsed data into your accounting software. The same access point can also send outbound invoices once you start issuing under InvoiceNow yourself, but for an SMB whose first concern is suppliers going live, the receiving role is what matters this week.

An InvoiceNow-Ready Solution Provider (IRSP) is an IMDA-accredited solution provider whose accounting or finance software has the InvoiceNow receiving capability either built in directly or wired through a partner access point. According to IMDA's InvoiceNow framework page, Singapore businesses connect to the InvoiceNow network by getting in touch with an IMDA-accredited Access Point Provider, and SMEs can activate InvoiceNow on their accounting or finance software through an IMDA-accredited InvoiceNow-Ready Solution Provider. In practice the two roles overlap — most SMBs end up choosing a single accredited provider that covers both functions for their stack, rather than contracting an access point and an IRSP separately.

The format you are receiving is PINT-SG: Singapore's localisation of Peppol International Invoice (PINT), built on the Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 specification and carried as UBL 2.1 XML. You will not need to read the schema yourself — the access point parses the document on the way in — but PINT-SG and BIS Billing 3.0 are both names you will see in supplier emails, IRSP support tickets, and accounting-software activity logs, so the vocabulary matters.

Mandate dates, the 5-corner model, and why Singapore picked Peppol are in our Singapore InvoiceNow mandate timeline and 5-corner model overview.

Choosing among the IMDA-accredited providers without picking a winner

IMDA publishes the accredited Access Point Provider and IRSP lists — they say who is allowed to operate on Singapore Peppol, not who fits your stack. Selection is on you. The criteria worth running against your shortlist:

• IMDA accreditation status. Provider appears on the current IMDA Access Point Provider or IRSP list. A non-accredited provider cannot deliver PINT-SG to a Singapore Peppol receiver.
• Native integration vs middleware bridge. Native (provider has built a direct, maintained connector into Xero, QuickBooks Online, or MYOB via the platform's app marketplace) is faster to set up and cleaner to support than middleware. Middleware is sometimes the only path for a given platform–provider combination and can be stable, but it adds a vendor to the diagram.
• Pricing model. Per-document, monthly subscription, free tier capped at a document count, or bundled with the accounting software. Free-tier caps bite quickly once a couple of suppliers go live; run the calculation against realistic supplier-uptake volume, not today's.
• Validation-rule transparency. Ask the provider — before signing — how they handle a PINT-SG that fails schema or business-rule validation: silent reject, error surface with diagnostic detail, or manual-review queue. The day you discover it is the day a real invoice did not land.
• Archiving and audit trail. Inbound XML retention window, downloadable original Peppol message for an audit, tamper-evident receipt log. IRAS audits are easier with the original PINT-SG payload than with the rendered draft bill alone.
• Geographic coverage. If suppliers sit in Australia, New Zealand, the EU, or other Peppol jurisdictions, pick a provider connected to multiple Peppol Authorities — operationally smoother when an overseas invoice acts up.
• Support quality. Singapore-business-hours availability and English-language coverage beyond the front-line ticket. Thin support gets expensive on the day a critical supplier's PINT-SG is stuck near month-end.

Storecove and Link4 surface most often in Singapore Xero and QuickBooks searches because they have built the strongest single-platform integrations for those products; smaller IRSPs (Advintek, Peppol Express, and others on the IMDA list) cover niches that may matter more for some businesses.

The Xero path — Storecove as the dominant bridge into Bills awaiting review

For a Singapore SMB on Xero, Storecove is the most commonly used bridge for receiving InvoiceNow, and the path to set up an InvoiceNow access point in Xero typically runs through it. Other Xero-compatible IRSPs on the IMDA list follow comparable patterns; Storecove is worked through here because it is the dominant choice in practice and the integration is mature.

The setup runs in this order.

1. Register with Storecove (or your chosen Xero-compatible IRSP) and complete the Singapore onboarding flow. Expect to supply your UEN, your registered business address, and — where the provider supports it — Singpass authentication of an authorised person to confirm the IRSP-side registration.
2. Configure your Peppol Participant ID under your SG UEN. The format is 0195:SGUEN<UEN> and the registration mechanics are walked in detail in the Participant ID section below; for the Xero setup itself, what matters is that the IRSP has the UEN correct before lodging.
3. Authorise the Storecove–Xero connection through Xero's connected-app flow. You sign into your Xero organisation, grant Storecove the permission scope it needs to create draft bills on your behalf, and confirm the connection in Storecove's dashboard. This is a one-time authorisation per Xero organisation.
4. Confirm the network registration. Once Storecove has lodged your Participant ID with Singapore Peppol, you become discoverable on the network. Suppliers' access points can now look up your Participant ID, find Storecove as your receiving access point, and route inbound PINT-SG to you.
5. Run a first inbound test. Ask a cooperative supplier to send a sample PINT-SG, or use a test fixture from Storecove if one is offered. Verify it lands in Xero in the Bills awaiting review state with vendor name, invoice date, line items, GST breakdown, and totals all populated from the XML.

What you see in Xero on day one will be familiar to anyone who already runs Xero AP. Inbound PINT-SG arrives as a draft bill in the same status Xero uses for any incoming bill — pre-populated from the structured XML rather than keyed in by hand or read off a PDF. From there it runs through the Xero bill approval workflow for draft bills awaiting review the same way as any other bill: review, code, approve, pay. The shape of the workflow does not change; only the source of the data does.

For Xero-side specifics — connected-app management, draft bill state behaviour, contact creation rules — Xero Central is the authoritative product documentation. For Singapore-specific Storecove behaviour, the IRSP's own documentation is the source of truth on field mapping, validation handling, and error notification settings.

The QuickBooks Online path — Link4 as the typical Singapore bridge

For QuickBooks Online users in Singapore, Link4 is the most common bridge into the Peppol network. As with the Xero path, other IMDA-accredited providers that support QuickBooks Online appear on the IMDA list, but Link4 is the default that surfaces most often in Singapore-region QBO setups. The pattern of setup is deliberately parallel to Xero — same shape, different account screens.

1. Register with Link4 (or your chosen QBO-compatible IRSP) and complete the Singapore onboarding flow. UEN, registered business address, and authorised-person details are the typical inputs.
2. Configure your Peppol Participant ID under your SG UEN, in the 0195:SGUEN<UEN> form covered in detail below.
3. Connect Link4 to your QuickBooks Online company through the Intuit App connection flow. You authorise the connection from your QBO company file, granting Link4 the permission to create bills.
4. Confirm Peppol-side registration so your QBO company is discoverable on the network. As with any IRSP, this is what allows a supplier's access point to route inbound PINT-SG to you.
5. Test with a single supplier. Confirm a sample PINT-SG arrives in the QuickBooks Online bills list with vendor, line items, GST, and totals populated. From there the bill runs through the standard QuickBooks Online bill approval workflow — the data source has changed, the review-and-approve gate has not.

One thing worth being candid about: QuickBooks Singapore Help and the QuickBooks Community thread on InvoiceNow are noticeably thinner than Xero Central's coverage of the equivalent. If you hit a question about exact field mapping, validation behaviour on an edge case, or how QBO handles a specific PINT-SG tax category code, Link4's own documentation and support team tend to be a faster route to a useful answer than Intuit's documentation. This is descriptive of the SERP and product-doc landscape today, not a comment on QuickBooks itself; the platform handles inbound bills perfectly well, the public documentation just has not caught up with the Xero-side material.

QuickBooks Online is one of the IRAS-listed accounting software options for Singapore SMBs, so adding InvoiceNow receiving fits the existing IRAS-friendly stack without changing accounting platforms. You are extending QBO with a Peppol receiving capability, not replacing it.

The MYOB path — native InvoiceNow with Singapore-specific differences

MYOB Singapore InvoiceNow receiving is structured differently from the Xero and QuickBooks paths because MYOB has built InvoiceNow capability natively into its product. Rather than contracting a separate access point or IRSP, you activate the e-invoicing module from within the MYOB Singapore product itself, and MYOB handles the access-point role on your behalf as part of the subscription.

A few things to confirm before activating.

• You are on the MYOB Singapore SKU, not the Australian product. The two share branding and a great deal of functionality but they are configured for different Peppol jurisdictions — the Singapore SKU registers your participant identity on Singapore Peppol with IMDA as the Peppol Authority; the Australian SKU registers on Peppol Authority Australia.
• Your UEN is current and matches your ACRA / BizFile records. MYOB lodges your Peppol Participant ID in the 0195:SGUEN<UEN> form on Singapore Peppol on your behalf, and a stale or mismatched UEN will fail registration.

The activation itself runs in-product. Enable the InvoiceNow / e-invoicing module from the relevant settings area in MYOB, supply or confirm your UEN, and let MYOB lodge the Participant ID with Singapore Peppol. Confirm the registration through MYOB's in-product confirmation screen, and optionally cross-check through the Peppol Directory (the public lookup is covered in the next section). Once registered, inbound PINT-SG invoices arrive as supplier bills inside MYOB, populated from the structured XML.

The Singapore differences from the Australian MYOB experience are worth holding onto:

• PINT-SG, not PINT A-NZ. The Singapore localisation has stricter rules for IRAS-relevant fields than the Australia/New Zealand variant. A PINT A-NZ document is not a PINT-SG document; the validation rules differ.
• IMDA, not the ATO. IMDA is the Peppol Authority for Singapore; the ATO is the equivalent for Australia. Your participant identity sits with the Singapore registry.
• Singapore GST rules. The current standard rate is 9%; reverse charge applies to certain imported services and low-value goods, customer accounting applies to specified prescribed goods, and zero-rating applies to exports and international services per IRAS guidance. The MYOB tax codes you apply on inbound bills follow IRAS rules, not the Australian ATO equivalents.

The closest operational sibling for Singapore MYOB users wanting to see the Peppol-receiving flow documented in step-by-step form is our Australia-flavoured walkthrough on how to receive Peppol eInvoices in MYOB and create supplier bills. The screen layouts and the underlying activation mechanic are very similar; substitute PINT-SG for PINT A-NZ, IMDA for the ATO, and IRAS GST treatments for ATO GST treatments, and the parallel pattern holds.

Registering a Peppol Participant ID in the 0195:SGUEN form

A Singapore Peppol Participant ID takes the form 0195:SGUEN<UEN>, where 0195 is the OpenPeppol-assigned identifier scheme for Singapore UEN-based participants and <UEN> is the entity's Unique Entity Number issued by ACRA. An entity with UEN 201234567A, for example, has the Participant ID 0195:SGUEN201234567A. Get the string right: a malformed Participant ID — wrong scheme number, missing SGUEN prefix, transposed UEN characters — is not network-discoverable, and a supplier's access point will report a failed lookup rather than deliver the invoice. You supply the UEN exactly as ACRA holds it; the IRSP assembles the full string.

What you need to register:

• The UEN itself, current per ACRA / BizFile records.
• For most IRSPs, Singpass authentication of an authorised person to confirm the lodgement on behalf of the business.
• Your chosen IRSP to submit the registration to Singapore Peppol on your behalf. You do not interact with the OpenPeppol infrastructure directly — the accreditation layer covered earlier is what makes this an IRSP-mediated step rather than a self-service one.

Timing is usually short. Most IRSPs complete the registration within a few hours; in some cases it takes a couple of business days, depending on internal processing and any verification the IRSP performs. Once registration propagates through the Peppol Service Metadata Locator (the SML, which is the network's directory layer), your Participant ID is discoverable from any other accredited access point on the Peppol network. From that moment, suppliers anywhere on Peppol can route PINT-SG invoices to you.

Verification has two avenues. The first is your IRSP's own confirmation interface — most providers expose a Participant ID status panel in their dashboard showing the registered identifier, the capabilities advertised (PINT-SG receiving, BIS Billing 3.0 receiving, others), and the registration timestamp. The second is the public Singapore Peppol ID lookup directory at peppoldirectory.sg, where anyone can search by Participant ID or by UEN and see what the network knows about a participant — including which document types they are set up to receive. The directory is useful in two directions: confirming your own registration looks right after the IRSP lodges it, and verifying that a supplier is actually network-reachable before chasing them about a missing inbound invoice. If a supplier insists they have sent you a PINT-SG and nothing has arrived, looking up their Participant ID is often the fastest way to find the issue (their registration may not be live, or it may not advertise PINT-SG receiving capability for the document type they are sending).

One pitfall: a business should hold one Participant ID, not a duplicate per IRSP. If you switch IRSPs, the new one takes over the existing ID rather than registering a parallel one under the same UEN — duplicate registrations cause routing ambiguity and can send inbound invoices to the wrong access point. Raise it explicitly with the new IRSP at onboarding.

What a bookkeeper actually does when a PINT-SG lands as a draft bill

Once the access point and Participant ID are in place, the daily-life inbound flow looks like this. Your supplier issues an invoice through their access point. The supplier's access point routes the PINT-SG XML to your access point through the Peppol network. Your access point validates the document against the PINT-SG schema and the Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 business rules, and on validation it delivers the parsed data into your accounting software as a draft bill — PINT-SG invoices land as Xero draft bills in Bills awaiting review, as QuickBooks Online bills in the bills list, and as MYOB supplier bills — with vendor, invoice number, invoice date, line items, GST breakdown, and totals already populated from the XML.

What the bookkeeper does next is recognisable but not gone:

• Confirm vendor mapping. If the supplier is new, the system creates a vendor record from the PINT-SG sender details — legal name, UEN, and Peppol Participant ID — and the bookkeeper confirms the new record matches the expected supplier master. For existing suppliers, the access point reconciles to the existing vendor record.
• Confirm GST treatment. Standard supplies at the 9% rate, zero-rated treatments where applicable, reverse charge or customer accounting where IRAS rules require, and import GST for cross-border arrivals. The PINT-SG arrives with a tax category code; the bookkeeper validates that the chosen treatment matches the actual transaction. The XML carries what the supplier asserted; you remain responsible for whether IRAS would agree. The GST-treatment decisions made on each draft bill flow downstream into your quarterly return, so it pays to apply them with the F5 in mind — our walkthrough on how to build Box 5 and Box 7 of the Singapore GST F5 from AP supplier invoices covers the input-tax eligibility gate and import-permit handling that turn coded bills into a defensible return.
• Allocate the GL account(s). The access point cannot do this for new vendors or new spend categories — your chart of accounts is yours, the structured invoice does not know it. The coding decision stays with the bookkeeper.
• Approve. That moves the bill to Awaiting Payment in Xero, the equivalent state in QuickBooks Online, and the equivalent state in MYOB.

No manual data entry — the fields that came off a PDF by hand now arrive structured. The bookkeeper's review-and-approve gate still matters; what is left is the judgement work that data entry used to crowd out — new-supplier scrutiny, GST classification, GL coding, approval routing.

Supplier-side due diligence still belongs in this flow. PINT-SG arriving cleanly does not mean the supplier is who they say they are. Singapore AP teams should still confirm UEN status and GST registration, check the supplier against any internal watchlists, and apply the Singapore AP due-diligence checklist for missing trader fraud risk before authorising payment to a new counterparty. Structured-data inbound channels speed up data entry; they do not change the underlying counterparty controls.

One last point on validation. The access point catches schema violations and a defined set of business-rule failures before delivery — anything that fails validation will not appear as a draft bill at all and will instead surface in the IRSP's exception flow (which is why validation-rule transparency was on the selection-criteria list earlier). Anything that passes validation can still need substantive judgement on the accounting treatment; the buyer-side checks for PINT-SG validation before input GST claims sit on top of network conformance. Conformance is not correctness.

Through the transition window most SMB AP teams will receive PINT-SG and PDF invoices in parallel — smaller suppliers and overseas counterparties outside Peppol will keep sending PDFs for the foreseeable future. PINT-SG lands as a draft bill from your access point; PDFs can be pushed into the same structured shape with AI-powered invoice data extraction so the bookkeeper's review queue, fields, and approval routing stay consistent regardless of inbound channel. The same shape applies to neighbouring Peppol jurisdictions — the equivalent walkthrough for converting a PDF invoice into PINT A-NZ for Australia/NZ Peppol is a useful reference if your suppliers span SG and AU/NZ. For PINT-SG XML out of the accounting software and into a spreadsheet for spend analysis or audit sampling, the sibling article on how to convert PINT-SG XML invoices to Excel walks that path.

If you qualify for the Productivity Solutions Grant or IMDA's InvoiceNow Connect grant, current scheme rates and eligibility live on GoBusiness Grants (gobusiness.gov.sg); vendor blogs go stale within months.