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Organization
Tucked inside a meticulously restored 1928 Art Deco movie palace in Borgerhout, one of Antwerp’s most culturally vibrant neighborhoods, De Roma is the kind of place that makes you forget you’re there for a Tuesday night show. Its gilded ceilings and ornate façade have survived nearly a century of history, and today the hall draws more than 250,000 visitors a year to a program that blends music, theater, film, and community events.
De Roma is more than a concert hall. Accessibility, diversity, and deep roots in the local community are built into its identity—and that combination of artistic ambition and civic purpose comes with administrative complexity to match.
Context
On January 1, 2026, Belgium became the latest European country to mandate structured electronic invoicing for business-to-business transactions. Under the new rules, VAT-registered companies are required to exchange invoices through the Peppol network, a pan-European infrastructure for standardized digital billing. For public-sector invoicing, the obligation had already been in place for some time.
For cultural organizations like De Roma, this wasn’t an abstraction. Ticketing, accounting, and billing processes would need to work in lockstep. And Belgium is hardly alone: the Netherlands and France are each advancing their own mandatory e-invoicing frameworks, with more European countries expected to follow.
Challenge
Before the Peppol requirement took effect, De Roma’s invoicing workflow had a gap at its center. Business ticket orders came through ticketmatic, its ticketing platform. Accounting ran through Exact Online. The two systems did not talk to each other.
That meant someone on the finance team had to manually re-enter every business order into Exact to generate a legally valid invoice. The work was tedious, error-prone, and time-consuming—and under the new Peppol rules, it was no longer sustainable.
The costs of this manual process were threefold:
- Duplicate data entry on every corporate order
- A heightened risk of transcription errors in customer and billing data
- Mounting administrative pressure on a small finance team
Consider the math: schools frequently purchase group tickets for film screenings, and they typically want everything consolidated on a single invoice. Under the old system, that meant entering each line item by hand. “You can imagine how much manual work that created,” said Jonathan Cooman, who oversees customer and data management at De Roma.
Solution
De Roma brought the problem to its account manager at ticketmatic, which in turn engaged ticketmatic Studio—the platform’s custom development arm—to analyze the situation and propose a solution.
What Studio built was a bespoke integration between ticketmatic and Exact Online, designed from the ground up around De Roma’s internal sales flow and accounting configuration. At the heart of the solution is a dedicated Peppol delivery scenario within ticketmatic: when a business ticket order is processed through this channel, it is automatically translated into an invoice in Exact Online. Price types from ticketmatic are mapped to products in Exact, and new billing contacts are automatically added as customers when they don’t yet exist in Exact.
The integration also keeps the two platforms in continuous sync. When an invoice status changes in Exact Online—paid, overdue, cancelled—the corresponding order status in ticketmatic updates automatically. Authentication between the two environments runs through a secured connection, and a built-in log gives the team visibility into any issues—missing product mappings, failed invoicing attempts, and the like.
The result is a billing workflow with no duplicate entry and no manual steps in between—one that mirrors the way De Roma actually runs its business ticketing and bookkeeping.
Implementation
After De Roma raised its Peppol requirements with its ticketmatic account manager, the Studio team was brought in quickly. Once the organization gave the green light, the custom solution was developed and delivered for testing within a matter of weeks.
Throughout the implementation, ticketmatic worked closely with Jonathan to ensure the solution fit seamlessly into De Roma’s existing processes around ticketing, customer management, and billing.
Following the launch, ticketmatic Studio provides ongoing maintenance and security updates. For day-to-day support, De Roma continues to use the standard customer success channels it has always relied on.
Results
Since going live, the entire Peppol invoicing flow at De Roma runs without manual intervention. Business ticket orders are invoiced correctly, new customers are verified and created as needed, and payments sync between ticketmatic and Exact in real time—all within a workflow built around how the organization actually operates.
The results:
- Full compliance with Belgium’s Peppol legislation
- Complete elimination of duplicate data entry
- Reduced risk of errors in customer and invoice data
- A cleaner, more reliable way to track and follow up on invoices
Jonathan explains how the solution changed their workflow:
- On what the project meant in practice:
“Since Peppol, we had to enter invoices line by line. You can imagine how much manual work that created—especially for schools booking group film screenings and wanting everything on a single invoice. Automating that didn’t just make us more efficient; it eliminated the margin for error entirely.” - On setup and implementation:
“I was able to explain how I thought it should work between Exact and ticketmatic. The Studio team executed that with remarkable precision—and actively helped find solutions along the way. After a few test orders, it was live. Our invoicing now runs like clockwork.” - On the time it saves:
“If you estimate roughly fifteen minutes of manual work per invoiced ticketing order, the automation quickly adds up to a full workday saved every month.” - On working with ticketmatic:
“It went exceptionally smoothly. It was a pleasure to work together, and we reached a great outcome pretty quickly. I can only speak positively about it.”
FAQ
What if a corporate client isn’t yet in the accounting system?
The integration automatically checks whether a debtor already exists in Exact Online. If not, the system creates them from the data already in ticketmatic—before the invoice is generated.
Are payments tracked automatically?
Yes. As soon as an invoice is marked as paid in Exact Online, the payment status is reflected back to ticketmatic in real time.
Is this available as a standard feature?
No. The solution was developed specifically for De Roma’s workflows and systems. Custom integrations are built to match the particular setup of each organization.
Which administrative steps are automated?
Manual entry of business orders into accounting software is eliminated entirely. Invoices are generated and tracked automatically from within ticketmatic.
Need help automating your Peppol invoicing?
Ticketmatic Studio develops custom solutions within the ticketmatic platform, tailored to the workflows, systems, and strategic goals of cultural organizations. Every implementation starts from the organization’s existing processes and tech stack.
Dealing with Peppol compliance or another invoicing challenge? Get in touch—we are happy to work out the right approach for your setup.
