Billit alternative: the Peppol comparison, straight

Why Billit shows up so often when you search for Peppol

Billit positioned itself on electronic invoicing early and hard, well before the Belgian obligation became concrete. As a result the brand takes up a lot of room in search results the moment you type Peppol invoice or 2026 obligation. That visibility is earned: the tool does properly what it was built for.

That does not mean it matches your situation. The useful question is not who communicates best about Peppol, but what you will need in eighteen months, once electronic invoicing has become routine and your real pain points sit elsewhere: stock, the till, following up customers or watching your cash.

So we are not going to tell you that Billit handles Peppol badly. That would be false, and you would work it out for yourself within ten minutes. We would rather show you where the real dividing line between the two solutions lies.

What both solutions do in exactly the same way

On the core of electronic invoicing, the honest answer is that both tools tick the same boxes. Peppol is a European standard, not an in-house feature: software either complies with it or it does not, and there is no such thing as a Peppol that works better than the neighbour's Peppol.

In practice, with either product you send a structured invoice in the BIS 3.0 format, it lands directly in your customer's software without going through a PDF, and you receive your suppliers' invoices the same way. Both let you comply with the Belgian obligation between VAT registered businesses.

• Sending structured invoices in the Peppol BIS 3.0 format
• Receiving supplier invoices over the same network
• Compliance with the European standard EN 16931
• Looking a customer up in the Peppol directory before sending
• Archiving of invoices sent and received
• Compliance with the Belgian electronic invoicing obligation between VAT registered businesses

Where the two tools take different paths

The real difference is not in the electronic invoice, it is in everything around it. Billit is built around the document: the invoice comes in, the invoice goes out, it reaches the accountant. Novadesko is built around the business: the invoice is only one step between a customer, an item in stock, a payment received and a cash position.

That difference in philosophy shows mostly if you also sell directly, track stock or manage a growing customer base. It is almost invisible if you invoice fifteen jobs a month to the same regular clients.

• A built-in CRM: contacts, follow-ups and opportunities without a separate tool
• A point of sale with payment terminals, useful in retail and hospitality
• Stock management connected to your sales and purchases
• A cash flow dashboard that projects the payments you are expecting
• Automatic expense categorisation by reading the documents themselves
• Support in English, French and Dutch from a team based in Belgium

How the pricing is built on each side

Comparing two price lists line by line makes little sense when the offers are not built the same way, and those lists change regularly. What does stay stable is each vendor's billing logic, and that is what determines what you will really pay a year from now.

At Novadesko the subscription starts at 19 € excluding VAT per month with no minimum term, and access to the Peppol network is included: there is no document counter and no external operator to contract separately. Billit works with tiered plans to which document volumes are attached, which can be very economical at low volume and climb from there.

The one useful reflex before signing, whichever vendor you pick: take your real number of invoices sent and received over the last twelve months, then ask for the total annual cost for that exact volume, modules included. A headline monthly price tells you nothing until you have done that sum.

Which one to choose for your actual situation

There is no universal winner, there are profiles. Here is how we would answer if you asked us over the phone, including when the answer does not favour us.

Billit is a sound choice if your business fits inside invoicing: you are self-employed in services, you send a modest number of invoices, your accountant already knows the tool and you need no till, no stock and no CRM. Paying for features you will never use makes no sense at all.

Novadesko becomes the better choice as soon as the invoice is just one piece among others. If you sell over the counter as much as on invoice, if you track stock items, if you want to see your projected cash without rebuilding a spreadsheet every month, the gap widens sharply. And it widens further once you add up the separate subscriptions you will no longer have to pay alongside.

• Services, low volume, no side needs: both work, compare on price
• Retail or hospitality taking payments directly: Novadesko, for the built-in till
• Selling products with stock tracking: Novadesko, for the link between stock, sales and purchases
• Need to steer cash flow and chase payments: Novadesko, for the dashboard and the CRM
• Already juggling three separate subscriptions: look at total cost, not the headline price

Switching without breaking your invoicing

Fear of migration holds more people back than price does. It is understandable but largely overstated when both tools respect standard formats, which is the case here.

Your customers, items and invoices export out of Billit in common formats, then import into our system. Your invoice numbering picks up where it left off, which avoids the gaps in the sequence your accountant would hate. Your Peppol identifier stays the same: it is built on your company number, it follows you from one product to another, and only the network registration is updated.

The most comfortable moment to switch is still the start of a quarter or a financial year, once the previous period is closed. That said, changing mid-year causes no real trouble: you simply keep access to your old tool's history for the length of the transition.

Frequently asked questions