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Practical articles on ZUGFeRD, XRechnung, and German e-invoicing.
The vocabulary is the hardest part. ZUGFeRD, XRechnung, Factur-X, Peppol BIS: it sounds like four competing standards, and teams burn days comparing them. In truth there is one semantic standard, EN 16931, wearing different national outfits. Here is the map, and the one question that picks the right format.
Your German client asks for a ZUGFeRD invoice and your invoices are in English. Do they have to be translated? No. German VAT law prescribes content, not language, and in an e-invoice most of that content travels as language-neutral codes anyway. Here is what stays English, and where to be careful.
The XML is valid, the PDF looks fine, and the combination still fails: hybrid invoices break at the seams. The attachment name, the AFRelationship, the XMP extension schema and the PDF/A-3 conformance each have exactly one correct answer, and a mismatch between any two of them is enough.
Your export produces XML that parses, opens and looks right, and a customer's system still refuses it. That is not bad luck, it is layered validation: schema, European business rules, German add-ons and the PDF container each check different things. Here is the map, and the bugs each layer exists to catch.
The rejection email is in German, the attached report is in German, and somewhere inside it sits a code like BR-DE-15. Good news: the code is the whole message. Here is what the common codes mean, which of them actually block payment, and the fastest way to a file that goes through.
A German customer has told you that from January they need structured e-invoices. Before you buy anything, check whether the rule reaches you at all: for most suppliers outside Germany it does not, and a German VAT number alone changes nothing. What matters far more is what your invoice contains.
Every business in Germany has had to accept structured e-invoices since January 2025, including those that will never issue one. Receiving is the easy part. Checking and keeping them is where it gets interesting, starting with the fact that the page you can read is not the invoice.
German e-invoicing guidance is written in German, for Germans, by people selling accounting software. Here is the same information in plain English: the three deadlines and who each one binds, whether the rules reach you at all, and the surprisingly short list of things you actually need.
Every German business has had to accept e-invoices since January 2025. Both formats are covered here.