Country Guides

Germany

XRechnung and ZUGFeRD e-invoicing requirements for Germany, with Beliq configuration examples.

Germany mainly uses two EN 16931-based e-invoicing formats:

XRechnung — mandatory for many public-sector invoices (B2G) and increasingly used in B2B
ZUGFeRD — a PDF invoice with embedded XML data for system processing

Mandate timeline

Germany is phasing in mandatory B2B e-invoicing. Receiving a structured invoice is already required; issuing is phased in by prior-year turnover.

Date	What changes
1 January 2025	Every domestic business must be able to receive an EN 16931 e-invoice.
1 January 2027	Issuing becomes mandatory for businesses with prior-year turnover above EUR 800,000.
1 January 2028	Issuing becomes mandatory for all remaining domestic businesses.

Paper and PDF invoices (with the recipient's consent) and non-conforming EDI stay permitted through 31 December 2027.

Last verified against the German Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF) and the European Commission eInvoicing country page on 9 July 2026. Official source.

For the dates beliq tracks across every covered country, see the mandate calendar.

XRechnung

XRechnung is Germany’s official CIUS profile of EN 16931, maintained by KoSIT. It adds German-specific business rules on top of EN 16931.

Key requirements

Rule	Description
Buyer reference (BT-10)	Required for B2G invoices. This is the “Leitweg-ID” that identifies the receiving government entity
Seller email (BT-43)	Required — the seller must provide an email address
Buyer email	Required for certain routing scenarios
Payment means	At least one payment means must be specified
VAT identifiers	Either `vatId` (BT-31) or `taxId` must be provided for the seller

Generating XRechnung invoices

Use standard: "xrechnung" with output: "xml":

generate-xrechnung.sh

curl -X POST https://api.beliq.eu/v1/generate \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer blq_live_abc123..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "standard": "xrechnung",
    "profile": "en16931",
    "output": "xml",
    "invoice": {
      "number": "RE-2026-0042",
      "issueDate": "2026-04-13",
      "dueDate": "2026-05-13",
      "currencyCode": "EUR",
      "buyerReference": "04011000-12345-03",
      "seller": {
        "name": "Muster GmbH",
        "vatId": "DE123456789",
        "email": "rechnung@muster.example",
        "address": {
          "street": "Hauptstraße 1",
          "city": "Berlin",
          "postalCode": "10115",
          "countryCode": "DE"
        }
      },
      "buyer": {
        "name": "Stadtverwaltung Beispielstadt",
        "email": "eingangsrechnung@beispielstadt.example",
        "address": {
          "city": "Beispielstadt",
          "postalCode": "12345",
          "countryCode": "DE"
        }
      },
      "lines": [
        {
          "description": "Beratungsleistung April 2026",
          "quantity": 40,
          "unitCode": "HUR",
          "unitPrice": 95.00,
          "lineTotal": 3800.00,
          "vatRate": 19,
          "vatCategoryCode": "S"
        }
      ],
      "paymentMeans": {
        "typeCode": "58",
        "iban": "DE89370400440532013000"
      },
      "totalNetAmount": 3800.00,
      "totalTaxAmount": 722.00,
      "totalGrossAmount": 4522.00
    }
  }'

XML syntax

XRechnung supports both UBL 2.1 and CII D16B. Beliq generates CII by default.

Submission channels

XRechnung invoices are submitted to government entities via:

ZRE (Zentraler Rechnungseingang) — for federal agencies
OZG-RE — for state and municipal authorities

Beliq generates compliant XML. Submission to government portals is handled by your ERP or AP system.

Validation

Beliq validates XRechnung invoices against:

CII D16B or UBL 2.1 XSD schema
EN 16931 core Schematron rules (currently v1.3.16)
XRechnung-specific Schematron rules (currently v2.5.0)

See the validation artifacts page for version details.

ZUGFeRD 2.x

ZUGFeRD (Zentraler User Guide des Forums elektronische Rechnung Deutschland) is a hybrid format that embeds CII D22B XML inside a PDF/A-3 document. Beliq targets ZUGFeRD 2.x — jointly published with Factur-X 1.08 — and is widely used in German B2B invoicing because one file supports both people and systems.

Profiles

ZUGFeRD supports multiple profiles that determine the level of detail in the embedded XML:

Profile	Beliq value	Description
Minimum	`minimum`	Minimal structured data (invoice number, date, totals)
Basic WL	`basicwl`	Basic without lines — header data only, no line items
Basic	`basic`	Complete header data and line items
EN 16931 (Comfort)	`en16931`	Full EN 16931 compliance — recommended for most use cases
Extended	`extended`	Additional fields beyond EN 16931

Generating ZUGFeRD invoices

Use standard: "zugferd" with output: "pdf":

generate-zugferd.sh

curl -X POST https://api.beliq.eu/v1/generate \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer blq_live_abc123..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "standard": "zugferd",
    "profile": "en16931",
    "output": "pdf",
    "invoice": {
      "number": "RE-2026-0042",
      "issueDate": "2026-04-13",
      "currencyCode": "EUR",
      "seller": {
        "name": "Muster GmbH",
        "vatId": "DE123456789",
        "address": {
          "street": "Hauptstraße 1",
          "city": "Berlin",
          "postalCode": "10115",
          "countryCode": "DE"
        }
      },
      "buyer": {
        "name": "Kunde AG",
        "address": {
          "city": "München",
          "postalCode": "80331",
          "countryCode": "DE"
        }
      },
      "lines": [
        {
          "description": "Software-Lizenz",
          "quantity": 1,
          "unitCode": "C62",
          "unitPrice": 499.00,
          "lineTotal": 499.00,
          "vatRate": 19,
          "vatCategoryCode": "S"
        }
      ],
      "totalNetAmount": 499.00,
      "totalTaxAmount": 94.81,
      "totalGrossAmount": 593.81
    }
  }' --output invoice.pdf

The resulting PDF is a valid PDF/A-3b document with the CII XML embedded as factur-x.xml.

Parsing ZUGFeRD invoices

Upload a ZUGFeRD PDF to the parse endpoint to extract the embedded invoice data:

parse-zugferd.sh

curl -X POST https://api.beliq.eu/v1/parse \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer blq_live_abc123..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/octet-stream" \
  --data-binary @invoice.pdf

Beliq searches for known attachment filenames (factur-x.xml, zugferd-invoice.xml, ZUGFeRD-invoice.xml) and extracts the XML for parsing.

Common validation errors

Rule ID	Message	Fix
`BR-DE-1`	Buyer reference (BT-10) is missing	Add `buyerReference` to your invoice (required for XRechnung)
`BR-DE-5`	Seller email is missing	Add `email` to the `seller` object
`BR-DE-15`	Buyer email is missing	Add `email` to the `buyer` object
`BR-01`	Specification identifier missing	This is set automatically by Beliq — contact support if you see this
`BR-06`	VAT identifier is missing	Add `vatId` (e.g. `DE123456789`) to the seller

Resources

XRechnung specification — official KoSIT documentation
ZUGFeRD specification — official FeRD documentation
EN 16931 business rules — CEN/TC 434 Schematron rules