XRechnung

What XRechnung is

XRechnung is Germany's national standard for structured electronic invoices, maintained by KoSIT (the coordination office for IT standards, based in Bremen). Technically it is a CIUS — a Core Invoice Usage Specification — of the European norm EN 16931: it takes the European core invoice model and narrows it with German business rules, such as requiring a buyer reference (Leitweg-ID) when invoicing public authorities. An XRechnung is pure XML in either the UBL or the UN/CEFACT CII syntax. There is no visual document: the file is meant for software, and humans read it through a viewer.

Where it is mandatory

XRechnung, ZUGFeRD or both?

XRechnung is XML-only; ZUGFeRD/Factur-X wraps EN 16931 XML inside a human-readable PDF/A-3. Both can satisfy the e-invoicing requirements; which one a counterparty prefers is a practical question. Public-sector portals generally expect XRechnung, while many B2B workflows favor the hybrid format because staff can still open the invoice like a normal PDF.

In agency practice

Agencies feel this from two sides. Brand clients — and any public-sector or broadcaster client — increasingly request structured invoices, and validation is strict: one violated business rule and the receiving portal rejects the file. On the inbound side, creator and supplier invoices arriving as structured XML must be archived in that original electronic form to satisfy GoBD. The practical consequence: invoicing needs to live in software that produces and consumes these formats natively, rather than in a word processor exporting PDFs.