EN 16931: the required fields of the European standard
Choose your VAT situation and recipient: the list shows which fields of the standard your invoice must fill in and which of them German VAT law also requires.
Mandatory fields for your case
13
EN 16931 and the mandatory details under section 14(4) UStG.
| Of which from the VAT Act | 10 |
| Of which technical only (standard, KoSIT) | 3 |
| BT/BG | Field | Rule | Law |
|---|---|---|---|
| BT-1 | Invoice number | EN 16931 | section 14(4) no. 4 |
| BT-2 | Issue date | EN 16931 | section 14(4) no. 3 |
| BT-3 | Invoice type | EN 16931 | |
| BT-5 | Currency | EN 16931 | |
| BT-27 | Seller name | EN 16931 | section 14(4) no. 1 |
| BG-5 | Seller address | EN 16931 | section 14(4) no. 1 |
| BT-31/32 | VAT ID or tax number | BR-S-02 | section 14(4) no. 2 |
| BT-44 | Buyer name | EN 16931 | section 14(4) no. 1 |
| BG-8 | Buyer address | EN 16931 | section 14(4) no. 1 |
| BT-72 | Delivery date | national | section 14(4) no. 6 |
| BG-25 | Lines: quantity, unit, description, price | EN 16931 | section 14(4) no. 5 |
| BG-23 | VAT breakdown per rate | EN 16931 | section 14(4) nos. 7 and 8 |
| BT-109/112/115 | Totals net, gross, due | EN 16931 |
Prepared by Radif Partners · Method · VAT Act, ministry letters and XRechnung 3.0.2 checked on 25 October 2026
EN 16931 is the European standard for electronic invoices. It was commissioned by Directive 2014/55/EU, which obliges public contracting authorities throughout the Union to accept invoices that follow it, and the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) published it in 2017. At its core is a semantic data model: every item on an invoice has a name and a number, such as BT-1 for the invoice number or BT-115 for the amount due, and related items form groups such as BG-4 for the seller. Business rules with identifiers like BR-01 or BR-CO-15 come on top; they define which fields are mandatory and how the amounts must add up. How the model is written as XML is set by two permitted syntaxes, UBL and UN/CEFACT CII. Since 2025 the German VAT Act has tied its definition of an e-invoice to this standard. National specifications such as XRechnung tighten it but may not contradict it. The identifier of the plain standard in field BT-24 is urn:cen.eu:en16931:2017.
Where the standard comes from
Until the 2010s almost every country and sector had its own electronic invoice formats. Directive 2014/55/EU was meant to harmonise this for public contracts. It asked CEN for a standard describing the semantic data model and obliged the public contracting authorities of the member states to accept and process invoices that follow it. The result is EN 16931, whose first part appeared in 2017, hence the year in the identifier.
Germany implemented the directive for the federal level with the E-Invoicing Regulation. Since the rewrite of section 14 UStG the standard also applies to invoices between businesses: an e-invoice must comply with it, whatever format it is sent in.
A data model, not a file format
The standard does not say what a file looks like, only what information it carries. That is its central idea. An invoice consists of many such items, of which only some are mandatory. Each has a fixed meaning, a data type and a cardinality, meaning whether it may be missing or occur once or several times. Because every format uses the same model, software can convert a UBL file into a CII file without losing anything.
| Group | Content | Example fields |
|---|---|---|
| BG-4 | Seller | BT-27 name, BT-31 VAT ID, BT-32 tax number |
| BG-7 | Buyer | BT-44 name, BT-48 VAT ID |
| BG-16 | Payment instructions | BT-81 payment means, BT-84 IBAN |
| BG-22 | Document totals | BT-106 sum of lines, BT-109 net, BT-112 gross, BT-115 amount due |
| BG-23 | VAT breakdown | BT-116 taxable amount, BT-117 VAT amount, BT-118 category |
| BG-25 | Invoice line | BT-129 quantity, BT-146 price, BT-153 item name |
What German VAT law adds
The standard spans sectors and countries, so some details German law requires for a proper invoice are only optional in it. The mandatory details under section 14(4) UStG must nevertheless appear in the e-invoice: full name and address of both parties, the supplier’s tax number or VAT ID, the issue date, a sequential number, quantity and type of supply, its date, the consideration broken down by VAT rate, and the rate and VAT amount or a note on the exemption. The delivery date, for example, goes in BT-72, the exemption reason in BT-120. The list above therefore separates fields required only by the standard from those the law also requires.
Profiles and national specifications
A country or sector may restrict the standard but not extend it without leaving it. Such a restriction is called a CIUS. XRechnung is the German CIUS: it makes the buyer reference and the seller’s contact details mandatory, for instance. ZUGFeRD in the EN 16931 profile reproduces the standard without additions, while the EXTENDED profile goes beyond it as a so-called extension. The calculator shows which ZUGFeRD profile meets the standard:
As an e-invoice between businesses
As an e-invoice between businesses
Accepted
| To federal bodies | Use XRechnung instead |
| Name of the XML inside the PDF | factur-x.xml |
| Current version | 2.5.2 (4 August 2026) |
In practice, invoicing to EN 16931 satisfies the duty between businesses. Supplying public bodies requires the stricter XRechnung. The formats themselves are compared on e-invoice formats.