Error Guide

🇩🇪 BR-DE-17: Seller contact information (name, phone, email) required in XRechnung in Germany

ErrorMandatoryNeeds Input

BR-DE-17 fires when an XRechnung invoice's seller party (cac:AccountingSupplierParty/cac:Party) does not carry a complete cac:Contact block containing the seller contact point name (BT-41, cbc:Name), telephone (BT-42, cbc:Telephone) and email (BT-43, cbc:ElectronicMail). XRechnung makes all three contact fields mandatory; Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 makes them optional, so an invoice that validates against Peppol can still fail KoSIT XRechnung validation with BR-DE-17.

Quick Facts

Severity

Error (rejection)

Ruleset

XRechnung (Germany)

Fix Confidence

40%

Mandate

B2B Mandatory

Fix Type

Needs input

Why This Matters in Germany

Germany requires e-invoicing using XRechnung (UBL), XRechnung (CII), ZUGFeRD 2.x. Invoices with this error will be rejected. They cannot be processed for Germany compliance.

Invoice Navigator covers 147 XRechnung 3.0.2 rules for Germany.

How to Fix BR-DE-17

1
Identify invoice purpose
Determine if this is a standard invoice, credit note, or correction
2
Set valid type code
Use 380 (commercial), 381 (credit), 384 (corrected), 389 (self-billed), or 326 (partial)

Example: Before & After

Before (invalid)

<cac:AccountingSupplierParty>
  <cac:Party>
    <cac:PartyName><cbc:Name>Muster GmbH</cbc:Name></cac:PartyName>
    <cac:PostalAddress>...</cac:PostalAddress>
    <cac:PartyTaxScheme>
      <cbc:CompanyID>DE123456789</cbc:CompanyID>
      <cac:TaxScheme><cbc:ID>VAT</cbc:ID></cac:TaxScheme>
    </cac:PartyTaxScheme>
    <cac:PartyLegalEntity><cbc:RegistrationName>Muster GmbH</cbc:RegistrationName></cac:PartyLegalEntity>
    <!-- cac:Contact missing -->
  </cac:Party>
</cac:AccountingSupplierParty>

After (fixed)

<cac:AccountingSupplierParty>
  <cac:Party>
    <cac:PartyName><cbc:Name>Muster GmbH</cbc:Name></cac:PartyName>
    <cac:PostalAddress>...</cac:PostalAddress>
    <cac:PartyTaxScheme>
      <cbc:CompanyID>DE123456789</cbc:CompanyID>
      <cac:TaxScheme><cbc:ID>VAT</cbc:ID></cac:TaxScheme>
    </cac:PartyTaxScheme>
    <cac:PartyLegalEntity><cbc:RegistrationName>Muster GmbH</cbc:RegistrationName></cac:PartyLegalEntity>
    <cac:Contact>
      <cbc:Name>Accounts Receivable</cbc:Name>
      <cbc:Telephone>+49 30 1234567</cbc:Telephone>
      <cbc:ElectronicMail>invoicing@muster.de</cbc:ElectronicMail>
    </cac:Contact>
  </cac:Party>
</cac:AccountingSupplierParty>

Germany E-Invoicing Requirements

Phase

Status

Scope

B2G

Live (Nov 2020)

All federal suppliers

B2B receiving

Live (Jan 2025)

All German businesses

B2B sending

Jan 2027

>€800K annual revenue

B2B sending

Jan 2028

All businesses

Common Causes

•Common failure modes: (1) cac:Contact is missing entirely under the seller party — the source system never collects a contact for invoicing purposes. (2) cac:Contact exists but one of cbc:Name, cbc:Telephone, cbc:ElectronicMail is missing. The KoSIT schematron requires all three. (3) cbc:ElectronicMail contains an invalid value like 'noreply' (no @ sign) or whitespace. (4) cbc:Telephone is a free-text field with characters the validator does not accept (some validators enforce E.164-ish formats). (5) The invoice declares the Peppol BIS customisation but is sent to a German public-sector recipient that expects XRechnung — the KoSIT layer adds BR-DE-17 on top of EN 16931 and the rule fires. (6) Contact details are written under cac:PartyContact (the deprecated UBL element) instead of cac:Contact.

Fix BR-DE-17 automatically

Upload your invoice and let Invoice Navigator auto-remediate this error.

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