German e-invoicing is easier than its vocabulary. The rules are mostly mechanical once you know what each term actually decides; the pain is that guidance, error messages and contracts assume the vocabulary. Here are the terms worth knowing, ordered roughly by how often they decide something for a foreign supplier or an expat freelancer.
People and statuses
- Kleinunternehmer – a small-business status under § 19 of the VAT Act (not simply "a small company"): a business below a turnover threshold that charges no VAT. Consequence: Kleinunternehmer are permanently exempt from issuing e-invoices, but must still be able to receive them.
- Unternehmer – anyone acting as a business in VAT terms, from a freelancer to a corporation, landlords included. The receiving duty attaches to this status, which is why it covers essentially everyone.
- Steuerberater – the tax advisor, in Germany a licensed profession that often runs clients' bookkeeping. If your German customer "sends invoices to their Steuerberater", your file will be machine-read by accounting software; clean data matters more than pretty layout.
Identifiers
- USt-IdNr. – the EU VAT identification number (DE + nine digits). Used for cross-border B2B: reverse charge, intra-community supplies. Checkable live against the EU's VIES system.
- Steuernummer – the domestic tax number issued by the local tax office. A German invoice must carry the Steuernummer or the USt-IdNr.; one of the two suffices.
- Leitweg-ID – the routing identifier of a German public-sector buyer, e.g.
991-33333TEST-33. It goes into the invoice's buyer-reference field and is how portals deliver the invoice internally. No public directory exists: you get it from the authority that ordered. A missing Leitweg-ID is the single most common rejection.
Formats and rules
- E-Rechnung – legally, not "any digital invoice" but a structured file conforming to EN 16931. A plain PDF is not an E-Rechnung; German law files it under "sonstige Rechnung" (other invoice).
- ZUGFeRD / XRechnung / Factur-X – Germany's hybrid PDF format (ZUGFeRD format), Germany's pure-XML public-sector profile (XRechnung format), and the French co-published twin of ZUGFeRD. The shorthand that decides: companies get the hybrid, authorities the pure XML.
- BR-DE rules – the German add-on validation rules for XRechnung ("Business Rules, Germany"). Rejection reports quote them by code; the rejection guide translates the common ones.
- Skonto – an early-payment discount ("2% off if paid within 7 days"). In public-sector invoices it must be written in a rigid machine notation, not prose; invoice totals stay unreduced either way.
- Buchungshilfe – "booking aid": what accounting systems call a ZUGFeRD file whose profile (MINIMUM, BASIC WL) is too thin to be a complete invoice. If DATEV says this about your file, the profile is the problem.
Institutions and infrastructure
- GoBD – the tax administration's principles for keeping digital records. For invoices the practical core: keep the original file, unaltered and machine-readable, for eight years; a printout or a converted copy does not replace it.
- OZG-RE – the federal invoice-receiving platform for public-sector invoices (its predecessor ZRE was switched off in September 2025). The states run their own portals besides it.
- Peppol – the European delivery network many authorities accept as a submission channel. A transport, not a file format.
- BMF – the Federal Ministry of Finance, whose circulars ("BMF-Schreiben") settle the practical questions of the mandate; dates like "the letter of 15 October 2024" refer to these.
- ERechV – the federal e-invoicing ordinance behind the public-sector rules, including the extra mandatory fields.
Using the vocabulary
Most conversations with German counterparties reduce to three questions you can now parse: Which format? (ZUGFeRD for companies, XRechnung for authorities), Which identifiers? (your VAT number in the data fields; their Leitweg-ID if public-sector), Which channel? (email for B2B, portal or Peppol for B2G). What Germany actually requires from a foreign supplier, and when the honest answer is "nothing", is covered in Your German customer wants an e-invoice; the full deadline map lives in the English guide.
Legal position as at September 2026, last reviewed on 25 September 2026. Based on the German VAT Act (§ 14, § 19), the GoBD principles, the ERechV, EN 16931 and the published KoSIT and platform documentation. This glossary is orientation, not tax advice.
Frequently asked questions
Is a Kleinunternehmer the same as a small business?
No. It is a formal VAT status under § 19 with a turnover threshold, chosen or lost by the numbers, not by headcount. Its e-invoicing consequence is precise: permanently exempt from issuing, still obliged to receive.
Where do I find my customer's Leitweg-ID?
Only from the customer: in the order, the contract or the tender documents. There is no public register. Ask before invoicing; without it, a public-sector invoice cannot pass.
Do I need a USt-IdNr. to invoice German customers?
You need your own VAT identification in the invoice data; for foreign suppliers that is usually your home-country VAT number. The German USt-IdNr. is what German businesses carry.
What does GoBD mean for me as the sender?
Directly, little: it binds the German recipient's record-keeping. Indirectly, it explains their behaviour: they need your original file, unaltered, so send the invoice file itself rather than a link that expires.
My rejection email mentions BR-DE codes. Where are they explained?
Each code names one field. The rejection guide translates the frequent ones into English and shows the repair path: fix the one field in the rejected file and resubmit under the same invoice number.