Required Data for an E-Invoice

An e-invoice carries its mandatory information in the structured XML part. The exact required fields also depend on the selected profile, payment method, tax treatment, and business case. Billance supports you with live hints and technical validation; responsibility for correct and complete invoice data remains with you.

Core information

A regular structured invoice particularly needs:

• Seller name and complete address plus buyer name and complete recipient or billing address
• Invoice number, invoice date, invoice type, and currency
• At least one permitted tax or legal seller identifier
• At least one invoice line with name, quantity, unit, price, and tax category
• Net, tax, gross, and payable totals plus the matching VAT breakdown
• A delivery or service date or period appropriate to the transaction

Billance asks for the delivery or service date or period whenever § 14 UStG requires it. E-invoices add two technical rules: intra-community supplies always need it (BR-IC-11), and the ZUGFeRD EN16931 and ZUGFeRD Extended profiles require it whenever seller and buyer are based in Germany. This also applies to small businesses, small-amount invoices, credit notes and cancellations. Only down-payment invoices are exempt.

Recipient address and optional delivery address

In Billance, recipient address means the complete billing address of the invoice recipient, including street, postcode, city, and country. It does not automatically mean a separate delivery address. Enter a different delivery address or delivery location only when goods or services were actually supplied somewhere else or the business case requires it. If there is no different location, you do not need to enter the recipient address again as a delivery address.

Payment

For a positive payable amount, a payment due date or payment terms must generally be present. The payment method can trigger further requirements:

• Credit transfer: a suitable payment account, normally with an IBAN
• Direct debit: creditor ID, mandate reference, and debtor account
• Card payment: the permitted card information for that method

Profile-dependent information

Further rules apply depending on the output profile:

• XRechnung requires, among other things, buyer reference/BT-10, electronic seller and buyer addresses, and seller contact details
• PEPPOL BIS requires matching electronic endpoints and profile-compliant identifiers
• For public authorities, BT-10 often contains the Leitweg ID
• Tax-exempt, cross-border, or reverse-charge cases require matching identifiers and exemption reasons
• An invoice correction may require a reference to the preceding invoice
• Attachments, allowances or charges, and additional references trigger their own mandatory fields

Review, preview, create, and finalize

The actions in the Billance editor are separate steps:

1. Review required details (n) opens the outstanding information. No file is created and the document is not finalized.
2. Continue to preview opens the preview and output options. This still does not create the final PDF or XML file.
3. Generate E-Invoice creates the selected PDF/XML output.
4. Finalize then changes the document status and locks the document. If automatic status changes are enabled in Settings, Billance shows the target status before creation and applies it only after the file has been created successfully.

Complete the data in Billance

Keep your company profile, recipient, line items, tax treatment, payment method, and additional information complete. Pay particular attention to electronic address and scheme, buyer reference, seller contact, payment account, and VAT IDs for cross-border cases.

Live validation in the editor prevents many incomplete outputs. An additional validation checks the generated PDF or XML against the detected technical rule sets. It does not replace tax or legal advice for an individual case.