The list of accounting software used in Belgium is long: WinBooks, Yuki, Exact, Odoo, Silverfin, Sage BOB, Octopus, Horus, Adsolut, Billtobox, CodaBox, Dext, Pennylane. Comparing them line by line does not help much, because they do not all do the same job. Here is how to find your way, and what we were able to verify directly with the publishers.
- The question changed in 2026
- Three families people confuse
- What we verified with the publishers
- Who really chooses, you or your accountant
- Five checks before you sign
- Cloud or local installation
- What changing software really costs
The question changed in 2026
Until 2025, accounting software was chosen on price, usability and compatibility with the firm. Those criteria still hold, but another has moved ahead of them.
Since 1 January 2026, structured electronic invoicing has been mandatory between Belgian taxable persons for their B2B transactions. A tool that cannot issue and receive over Peppol does not merely inconvenience you: it puts you in breach.
The good news is that most publishers active in Belgium integrated that function during 2025. The bad news is that « Peppol compatible » covers different realities, from native integration to a paid add-on module.
Three families people confuse
This is the most useful distinction, and the least explained.
Practice software. It is designed for a professional handling dozens or hundreds of files: full chart of accounts, multi-file management, production of the annual accounts and the returns. Your accountant uses it, you do not.
Solutions for businesses. They serve to invoice, track payments, record purchases and sometimes keep full accounts in house. That is what you use day to day, and that is where your Peppol compliance plays out.
Exchange components. They keep no accounts at all. They transport, capture or digitise: bank statements, payroll entries, scanned invoices, Peppol flows. They sit between the two previous families.
Confusing the three is the most common source of bad choices. A business that buys practice software pays for power it has no use for. A business that takes an exchange component believing it is buying accounting discovers the misunderstanding at the first set of annual accounts.
What we verified with the publishers
The table below reproduces only what appeared on the publisher's own site on 29 August 2026. We left blank the cells we could not verify at source, rather than guess them.
| Solution | Target audience per the publisher | Electronic invoicing |
|---|---|---|
| Exact WinBooks | Self-employed, SMEs, accounting firms, non-profits and schools | « Electronic invoicing via Peppol, standard with every version » |
| Yuki | Accountants, entrepreneurs and SMEs, finance managers | Describes itself as « 100 % Peppol certified » and refers to the 1 January 2026 deadline |
| Odoo Accounting | From micro-business to large enterprise, within an integrated suite | Describes itself as « Peppol certified », electronic invoicing by EDI |
| CodaBox | Accountants and businesses | A service feeding accounting software, not accounting software itself |
Two observations are worth noting. First, WinBooks is now part of the Exact offering: the winbooks.be domain redirects to the Exact WinBooks pages. Second, CodaBox illustrates the third family perfectly: it automatically delivers bank data and invoices into your accounting software, through its CODA, SODA, CARO, VOICI and VOILA services, but it replaces neither the software nor the accountant.
The other solutions present on the Belgian market, such as Silverfin, Adsolut, Sage BOB, Octopus, Horus, Billtobox, Dext or Pennylane, occupy different positions across those three families. Their exact status changes fast and is best checked with the publisher rather than in a frozen comparison.
Who really chooses, you or your accountant
In most SME and self-employed files, the accounting software is the firm's. You do not have to change it, and you have no say in it either.
What you do choose is the tool you invoice with and use to pass on your documents. And there, compatibility with the firm matters as much as the features: a tool your accountant cannot read creates manual work, which ends up in your fees.
The right sequence is therefore the reverse of the instinctive one. You first ask the firm what it works with and what it can receive, and you choose afterwards. The firms listed in the AccountMap directory state the software they use, which lets you ask the question before the first meeting.
Five checks before you sign
- Are Peppol issuing and receiving included, or billed as an extra?
- Does my accountant already work with this tool, or can they import its data?
- Can I export my data in a usable format if I change tools?
- Is the advertised price per user, per file, or per invoice volume?
- Who provides support, the publisher or a reseller, and in which language?
The third question is the one people forget and later regret. A tool you cannot cleanly get your data out of turns a change of software, or of firm, into an expensive project.
Cloud or local installation
The debate has lost much of its heat, but it still matters on three points.
Shared access. An online solution lets your firm work on your data without exchanging files. That is what makes follow-up during the financial year possible, rather than an annual catch-up.
Regulatory updates. When a rule changes, and 2026 has given several examples between electronic invoicing and the VAT chain, an online solution is updated for everyone at once. A local installation depends on someone intervening.
Getting out. This is the point most often the reverse of intuition. With a local installation, the data is at your premises but in a proprietary format. Online, it sits with the publisher but the export functions are generally better equipped. In both cases, the real question is the export format, not the location.
For a business that outsources its accounting, the question often does not even arise: the firm imposes its environment, and you only choose the invoicing tool that connects to it.
What changing software really costs
The licence price is the visible part and the least decisive. Three costs weigh more.
Migrating the history. Carrying over opening balances is simple. Carrying over several years of detailed history is not, and it is not always necessary: keeping the old system in read-only mode for the legal retention period is often cheaper.
Learning time. It is counted in weeks, not hours, and it rarely falls at a convenient moment.
Temporary double entry. During the switch, many businesses run both systems in parallel. That is prudent, and it is a real cost to budget for.
The right moment to change tools is the same as to change firm: after a close, on a settled financial year, never three weeks before a deadline.
Sources
- Exact WinBooks, publisher's product pages
- Yuki, publisher's site
- Odoo Accounting, publisher's site
- CodaBox, publisher's site
- efacture.belgium.be, official portal
Details recorded on the publishers' sites on 29 August 2026. Offerings and features change: verify Peppol status with the publisher before committing.
Further reading
- Is electronic invoicing mandatory in Belgium in 2026?
- Electronic invoicing: the definition
- Find a firm by the software it uses
This article is for information only. AccountMap is an independent directory and has no commercial partnership with the publishers mentioned.