E-invoicing
An electronic invoice is the same bill as the PDF, in a structured format a machine can read. Public bodies across the EU require one, and a growing number of private buyers ask for it.
Kontier generates the document from the invoice you already have.
What is generated
EN 16931 is the European semantic standard. XRechnung is the German implementation of it, and what German public authorities require. Both are produced from the finalised invoice, so the numbers cannot disagree with the PDF.
Generation happens against a profile, which fixes the flavour of the output. Which profile a buyer needs is something they tell you.
Nothing is sent unless you configure a channel
By default Kontier generates and archives the validated document and sends it nowhere: you deliver it through whatever channel the buyer has told you to use.
To have Kontier submit documents itself, configure a delivery channel for your
(the seller's) country: which network or authority a document goes to (for
example Peppol), under which stored credentials, in test or live mode. A new
channel starts in test mode. Channels are managed with
GET /v1/organization/einvoicing/channels and
POST /v1/organization/einvoicing/channels, and the credentials they name with
PUT /v1/organization/einvoicing/channel-credentials. Stored secrets are never
returned by any endpoint.
Clean customer data
A structured invoice is validated, so data the PDF would tolerate will fail here.
The usual culprits are a missing or malformed VAT identification number, an incomplete billing address, and a missing buyer reference where the buyer requires one. Fixing those on the customer before finalising is much easier than reissuing afterwards.
Per-customer preference
Not every customer wants one. Customers carry an e-invoicing preference, so you can generate for those who need it and leave everyone else on the PDF.
Reference
| Topic | When you need it |
|---|---|
| Invoices | The document this is generated from |
| Customers | Tax identity and address, the inputs that get validated |
| Taxes | Why the tax breakdown must be resolvable |