Counterfoil country mandate
For invoices to the federal administration, § 3 (1) of the E-Rechnungsverordnung entered into force on 27 November 2020. § 4 (1) names the XRechnung data-exchange standard, in its current version, as the standard invoice issuers use in principle. Retrieved 2026-10-18. This page does not state a date for the Länder, and it does not state the domestic business-to-business duty. Not a validator. Not tax, legal, or accounting advice.
Invoice page · Rule notes · BR-DE-15 · Field map · Privacy
§ 11 (3) of the ordinance says: “§ 3 Absatz 1 tritt am 27. November 2020 in Kraft.” That date is 27 November 2020. § 3 (1) says invoice issuers must issue and transmit invoices to invoice recipients in electronic form. They may use an invoice sender to do that.
Two earlier dates in the same section are not that supplier sentence. § 11 (1) says the ordinance, subject to subsections 2 and 3, entered into force on 27 November 2018. § 11 (2) says that for sub-central contracting authorities, sector contracting authorities, and concession grantors, the ordinance entered into force on 27 November 2019.
The federal administration’s English page for invoice issuers says: “As of 27 November 2020, you must be able to create, submit and securely store electronic invoices (e-invoices) until the required retention period has expired.” The next sentence says: “Since that date, federal contracting authorities have no longer accepted invoices in paper form or as PDF files.” The same page says the federal ordinance governs e-invoices sent to the federal administration, and that the federal states implement Directive 2014/55/EU on their own.
§ 4 (1) says: “Für die Ausstellung von elektronischen Rechnungen haben Rechnungssteller und Rechnungssender grundsätzlich den Datenaustauschstandard XRechnung vom 29. September 2017 (BAnz AT 10.10.2017 B1) in der jeweils aktuellen Fassung zu verwenden. Es kann auch ein anderer Datenaustauschstandard verwendet werden, wenn er den Anforderungen der europäischen Norm für die elektronische Rechnungsstellung entspricht.”
The English page says: “Electronic invoices for the federal administration must be issued using the current version of the XRechnung standard format in accordance with section 4 (1) sentence 1 of the federal E-Invoicing Ordinance (E-Rechnungsverordnung, ERechV). Other standards may be used (such as ZUGFeRD (version 2.2.0 or later) in the XRechnung profile) as long as they meet the requirements of the European standard (EN 16931), the terms of use for the invoice submission portals, and the requirements of the federal E-Invoicing Ordinance.”
That page also says: “The XRechnung standard is thus Germany’s version of the European standard EN 16931 (a Core Invoice Usage Specification, or CIUS).” The apostrophe in Germany’s is the character on that page. The page calls the file an XML data file. This note does not name a version number. The ordinance says the current version. This site does not store the standard’s PDF.
§ 2 (2) says an electronic invoice is a document issued, transmitted, and received in a structured electronic format, when that format allows the document to be processed automatically and electronically. The invoice page on this site saves a PDF from the browser. That PDF is not an XRechnung file. The page does not emit XRechnung.
§ 3 (3) says the duty in subsection 1 does not apply to three groups. The first is: “die nach Erfüllung eines Direktauftrags bis zu einem Betrag von 1 000 Euro gestellt werden,”. The statute page writes 1 000 with a space. The second group falls under § 8 or § 9. The third is invoices in organ-loan procedures under § 159 (1) number 5 of the Competition Act.
The English page says: “The invoice recipient’s buyer reference is entered in the field “Buyer reference” (BT-10) in the XRechnung standard. The buyer reference must be provided with every e-invoice sent to federal administration authorities.” BR-DE-15 is the stored note for that field. This page does not add a rule, and it does not write BT-10 into an invoice file.
The statute pages are the text published by the Federal Ministry of Justice. The English page is the federal e-invoicing portal. No PDF is stored on this site.