EN 16931 XRechnung

XRechnung 3.0: the 61 rules Germany adds to EN 16931, and the identifiers an invoice is claimed under.

Every invoice to a German public body goes under this profile. An invoice can satisfy the standard and still be refused. This says so before it is sent.

Install

dependencies:
  en16931: ^0.1.2
  en16931_xrechnung: ^0.1.1

Check an invoice

Claim the profile on the invoice, then check it. The standard and the profile are checked together.

import 'package:en16931/en16931.dart';
import 'package:en16931_xrechnung/en16931_xrechnung.dart';

final invoice = Invoice.fromLines(
  number: '2026-0042',
  issueDate: DateTime(2026, 9, 13),
  specificationIdentifier: xrechnungSpecification,
  buyerReference: '991-33333TEST-33',
  seller: const Seller(
    name: 'COMAPPS GmbH',
    vatIdentifier: 'DE123456789',
    electronicAddress: Identifier('991-33333TEST-33', scheme: Scheme.germanLeitwegId),
    address: Address(city: 'Berlin', postalCode: '10115', country: 'DE'),
    contact: Contact(
      name: 'Rechnungswesen',
      telephone: '+49 30 123456',
      email: 'rechnung@example.de',
    ),
  ),
  buyer: const Buyer(
    name: 'Bundesamt',
    electronicAddress: Identifier('991-33333TEST-33', scheme: Scheme.germanLeitwegId),
    address: Address(city: 'Bonn', postalCode: '53113', country: 'DE'),
  ),
  delivery: Delivery(date: CalendarDate(2026, 9, 12)),
  paymentInstructions: const PaymentInstructions(
    means: PaymentMeansCode.sepaCreditTransfer,
    creditTransfers: [CreditTransferAccount('DE89370400440532013000')],
  ),
  lines: [...],
);

for (final violation in validateXrechnung(invoice)) {
  print(violation);
}

What XRechnung adds

Four things an invoice that passes EN 16931 still gets refused for.

The buyer reference. BT-10 is optional in the standard and required here. A public body puts its Leitweg-ID there, and the invoice is routed by it.

A seller anyone can reach. The contact group, a contact point, a telephone number with digits in it and an email address that is shaped like one. City and post code on both sides.

Payment instructions, and only the ones that go with the means. A transfer carries the account and nothing else, a card the card, a direct debit the mandate with its creditor identifier. An IBAN behind a SEPA payment has to close on its own check digits.

A discount for early payment written in one exact form. The standard leaves the payment terms as free text. Germany reads that text back, so skontoPaymentTerms writes it and readSkonto reads it.

skontoPaymentTerms(
  [Skonto.of(days: 14, percentage: 2)],
  text: 'Zahlbar innerhalb 30 Tagen.',
);
// Zahlbar innerhalb 30 Tagen.
// #SKONTO#TAGE=14#PROZENT=2.00#

Worth knowing up front

Three profiles sit under one standard. xrechnungSpecification is XRechnung proper, and the extension and clean vehicles identifiers each turn on their own rules. Which ones run is read from BT-24: an invoice checked as something it does not claim to be tells you nothing.

A profile that widens a code list also takes the narrower rule of the standard off. The clean vehicles profile classifies a vehicle under a scheme BR-CL-13 refuses, so an invoice obeying the profile would break the standard. xrechnungOverrides names each pair.

Of the 61 rules, 47 are checked here, 12 cannot be broken by an invoice built with this model, and 2 are about how the XML is written rather than what the invoice says. Most of the 12 bear on terms the extension adds and EN 16931 does not have, sub invoice lines and third party payments: an extension document read from elsewhere loses those terms on the way in.

The rule catalogue is read from the artefacts KoSIT publishes, so it is complete by construction. A test fails when a rule has no answer.

What it does not do

It says whether an invoice is ready to send, and nothing else. The model and the rules of the standard are in en16931, and the document is written by en16931_cii or en16931_ubl. How it reaches the public body, over Peppol or through one of the German portals, does not change the document.

License

Released under the MIT licence.

The rule catalogue is generated from the artefacts KoSIT publishes, which are Apache 2.0. None of their content is redistributed: what is taken from them is which rules exist, how severe each is and which terms it bears on.