Germany

Legal background

Legal background on B2G e-invoicing in Germany

Responsible institutions

• Federal Ministry of Finance
• Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Community

Affected entities (B2B, B2G, B2C)

Germany mandates e-invoicing for B2G for all invoices sent to federal institutions. Due to the high level of autonomy of the German federal states, different legislations are in place in the 16 federal states.

e-invoice document standard

Germany builds on the EN 16931 and uses a custom CIUS called XRechnung. Further information on the XRechnung standard is provided on the website of Koordinierungsstelle für IT Standards KoSIT.

Transmission standards

XRechnung documents may be sent using one of the following channels:

• Manual entry using a Web Form
• Manual upload of an XRechnung instance using a Web Form
• Sending via email
• Sending via Peppol
• Sending via DE-Mail (a type of certified electronic mail in Germany)

Most of the XRechnung invoices in Germany are being sent via email or Peppol. The use of Peppol has seen a significant uptake in recent months.

Contact options

• Questions in regard to XRechnung can be addressed to KoSIT
• Questions in regard to e-invoicing in general can be addressed to the general website on e-invoicing in Germany
• For technical remarks a GitHub repository and the respective issue tracker can be used