German e-invoicing: which formats, which deadlines?
Germany imposes a form, not a channel — and keeps no directory. What remains is to check what your software produces, and to know which turnover triggers which deadline.
This applies to you, whatever your size
Be able to receive electronic invoices
Since 1 January 2025, for every domestic business — the ministry states plainly that no exceptions are provided for. Even small businesses exempt from issuing must be able to receive. And the bar is lower than most assume: a mailbox is enough.
Your dates
Two questions. Nothing is sent anywhere — the answer is computed in your browser.
What applies to you
Which formats are compliant?
Germany imposes a form, not a channel. There is nothing to look up — but there is something to check: what your software actually produces.
XRechnungcompliant
The German standard maintained by KoSIT, compliant with EN 16931.
ZUGFeRD 2.0.1 und höhercompliant
A hybrid of PDF and embedded XML — the machine-readable data is what counts, not the visual layer.
ZUGFeRD, Profile MINIMUM und BASIC-WLnot an e-invoice
Explicitly EXCLUDED, despite carrying the same name. Exporting in the MINIMUM profile does not produce an e-invoice — and nothing says so.
EDI (EDIFACT)tolerated until 31 December 2027
Tolerated by agreement while correct and complete extraction remains possible — until 31 December 2027.
Einfaches PDFnot an e-invoice
No longer an e-invoice since 1 January 2025. Permitted as an ordinary invoice during the transition only WITH the recipient's consent — and on the same split deadline as paper.
Papiertolerated until 31 December 2026
Possible without consent — unlike PDF; the difference is surprising, but that is what the statute says. Mind the deadline: 31 December 2026 for everyone, extended by a year only for issuers below the threshold.
To test a real file, the standards body publishes a free validator: KoSIT validator
What still works without an e-invoice
Small-amount invoices up to €250 gross, travel tickets and supplies by small businesses may still always be sent as ordinary invoices. The same goes for supplies to consumers and to legal persons that are not businesses.
There is no directory — and that is not an oversight
Germany keeps no recipient directory, no list of approved platforms, no registration. Nobody — no tool either — can tell you whether a partner can receive, or in which format they want it. That is a civil-law matter: ask, and put it in the contract. And no routing ID is needed in B2B; that belongs to public-sector invoicing.
One obligation, five different laws
E-invoicing is being mandated country by country, and the gaps are wider than most groups expect. It is tempting to treat it as one project — pick a network, switch it on everywhere — and that is the assumption that produces rejected invoices in one country while another has not yet asked for anything. The four things that actually differ are the channel, the format, the date, and who is caught by it.
The clearest illustration is that two neighbouring countries can require opposite things. Belgium mandates a network: since January 2026 a domestic B2B invoice travels over Peppol, and the royal decree says so in its own text. Germany mandates a form and no network at all: since January 2025 every business must be able to receive a structured invoice, but the finance ministry is explicit that it may arrive by e-mail. France mandates neither in that sense — it built a state directory and a register of approved platforms, and an invoice must pass through one of them.
Peppol, and why it is not the whole story
Peppol is a shared addressing and transport network for business documents. Rather than each company agreeing a format with each customer, every participant registers an address and exchanges structured invoices through certified access points. An invoice sent over Peppol arrives as data your accounting system can read, not as a PDF someone has to re-type.
Being 'on Peppol' means two things: your identifier resolves to a registered address, and your software can produce and receive the structured format. Many companies discover they have the first without the second, because an integrator registered them during a pilot and nothing was connected afterwards.
What changes from country to country is what that registration is worth. In Belgium it is how you comply. In the Netherlands it is voluntary — nothing in Dutch law requires it, and a Dutch business typically joins because a Belgian or German customer asks. In Germany it is one delivery option among several and carries no legal weight of its own. And in France an entry in the state directory is not something you create yourself: your approved platform declares you, which is precisely why an absent entry is worth checking.
What this means inside Odoo
Odoo acts as a Peppol access point, and it is registered on the French tax authority's list of approved platforms — since 15 April 2026, on the official list published on 19 August 2026, the same list the French tool on this site searches. That covers the two mechanisms that need an intermediary; the German requirement, being a format rather than a channel, is a question of what your invoices contain rather than how they travel.
The work is rarely the connection itself — it is the data behind it: customer records without valid VAT or registration numbers, product lines without the tax mapping the format requires, and journals that were never set up to keep structured invoices for the statutory retention period. A missing tax mapping does not produce a visible error on your side; it produces an invoice rejected at the network level that never reaches your customer.
Our usual sequence is to clean the partner and tax data first, register the addresses second, and only then switch the outbound flow. Doing it in the other order produces a queue no one can unblock at month end — and it tends to surface in the week the obligation starts, which is the worst possible week to discover it.
Not necessarily. ZUGFeRD from version 2.0.1 qualifies — but the MINIMUM and BASIC-WL profiles are explicitly excluded. Exporting in MINIMUM does not produce an e-invoice, and nothing in the workflow says so. It is the most common silent mistake.
None at all. The finance ministry states that the law prescribes no particular transmission route: e-mail, an interface, a shared location, a portal download — even handing over a USB stick. The route is a civil-law matter between the parties.
By asking them. Germany keeps no recipient directory and no list of approved platforms, unlike Belgium or France. No tool can answer that for you, including this one.
Not for issuing: supplies by small businesses may still be sent as ordinary invoices. For RECEIVING, very much so — no exception at all has applied since January 2025.
Both, but not on the same terms. Paper is possible outright; a plain PDF only WITH the recipient's consent. The difference is surprising, but that is what the statute says.