You received an e-invoice that will not validate: what now?

Since 1 January 2025 every business in Germany must be able to receive e-invoices: no exemption, no size threshold. Many have since discovered that the files arriving cannot be processed cleanly.

Between January and February 2026 the German Confederation of Skilled Crafts surveyed 1,926 businesses across 52 chambers. About two thirds reported problems receiving e-invoices: files that cannot be validated, sender and receiver validation tools returning different answers, and hybrid invoices where the data record disagrees with the visible PDF. The confederation attributes this mainly to software rather than to the businesses. (Source: ZDH survey, January to February 2026.)

Why this is more than an annoyance

An invoice that does not meet the formal requirements can put the input-VAT deduction at risk. That is the real reason an unverifiable incoming invoice should not simply be filed, and why it is worth documenting the fault rather than working around it.

What you are not allowed to do

You may not repair a received invoice yourself. If the file is wrong, the supplier has to issue a corrected one. Your job is to name the fault, not to fix it.

How to document the fault

• Check the file against EN 16931 and the national profile built on top of it.
• Note the rule the check fails on, BR-DE-19 or BR-CO-15, for example.
• Send the supplier the rule and the report, not just the sentence that it did not work.

A named rule is something the other side's bookkeeper can hand to their software vendor. “Your invoice will not open” is not.

When two checkers disagree

That is exactly what the surveyed businesses report. What helps then is a tool using the same checking logic as the public administration: the official KoSIT validator. Ours runs that check, free and without an account, and shows you the rule in plain language so you can pass it on.