Create an XRechnung – free, no software needed

Create an XRechnung: free, no software, in 3 minutes

You have won an order from a school, a district or a federal agency in Germany – and the invoice has to arrive as an XRechnung. Or your accountant has pointed you to the German B2B e-invoicing mandate and you want to see what such a file even looks like. That is what this tool is for: enter issuer, recipient and line items, click “Create XRechnung”, download the XML. The file is checked in the same step, before you send it. Everything happens in your browser; nothing is stored.

What an XRechnung is

An XRechnung is not a PDF but a structured XML file following the European standard EN 16931. Every piece of information – invoice number, sender, line items, tax amounts – sits in a defined field so the recipient’s software can process it without retyping. XRechnung is the German profile of that standard, maintained by KoSIT. Two syntaxes are allowed, UBL and CII; both are equivalent. This tool produces the CII variant, the same one Univents emits for real invoices.

How it differs from ZUGFeRD: ZUGFeRD is a hybrid format that embeds the XML inside a PDF. Humans see the PDF, machines read the XML. An XRechnung is the XML alone. Public authorities usually require the pure XRechnung; in B2B many recipients accept either.

Who needs an XRechnung

Public-sector orders. Anyone supplying German federal, state or municipal bodies has had to invoice electronically for several years. The key is the Leitweg ID: it tells the central invoice inbox which internal unit the invoice is routed to. Without a valid Leitweg ID the invoice is rejected – it is the first thing you ask your client for.

B2B in Germany. Since 1 January 2025 every domestic business must be able to receive e-invoices. For issuing them there are transition periods: until the end of 2026 invoices may still go out on paper or as PDF if the recipient agrees; businesses with a prior-year turnover of up to 800,000 euros have until the end of 2027. From 2028 the e-invoice is mandatory for all domestic B2B transactions. That is the state of the Growth Opportunities Act – check deadlines and exemptions for your case with your tax adviser; this tool is not advice.

Mandatory fields of an XRechnung

The standard demands more than a classic invoice shows. The tool therefore asks exactly for the fields where invoices fail in practice:

• Issuer: name, full address, VAT ID, email, phone number and IBAN. Yes, phone number and IBAN are mandatory – they are missing in almost every rejected XRechnung. And a tax number alone is not enough: without a VAT ID the validator rejects the file under rule BR-CO-26.
• Recipient: name, full address, Leitweg ID or buyer reference.
• Invoice header: invoice number, invoice date, due date, service period.
• Line items: description, quantity, unit as a UN/ECE code, net unit price, tax rate.
• Totals: net per tax rate, tax per rate, gross – consistent to the cent.

The tool calculates the totals for you, with the same rounding rule the authority’s validator applies.

Common validation errors – and how the tool catches them

• Missing or wrong Leitweg ID. The tool checks the structure and the check digits of the Leitweg ID before you create the file. A typo shows up as a warning under the field.
• Wrong unit codes. “Piece”, “hour” or “flat rate” have to appear as UN/ECE codes in the XML, for example H87, HUR or C62. You pick the unit in plain language; the tool sets the code.
• Rounding of totals. If line totals, tax amounts and the grand total do not add up exactly, the validator rejects the file. The tool rounds per tax rate and derives the grand total from that – not the other way round.
• Missing phone number or address. The pre-check names every gap with the rule code the KoSIT validator uses too, such as BR-DE-6 for the phone number.

After creating the file you see two results: the completeness pre-check with rule codes and the structural check you can also run on other people’s files in the XRechnung validator. Both green, and the file is ready to send.

Example: school catering invoiced to a municipality

A caterer supplies a city’s school fair: 120 portions of lunch at 9.50 euros net with 7 percent VAT and 8 hours of service staff at 32 euros net with 19 percent. The tool calculates 1,140.00 euros net at 7 percent (79.80 euros tax) and 256.00 euros net at 19 percent (48.64 euros tax), 1,524.44 euros gross in total. The recipient is the school department with its Leitweg ID, the units are “person” and “hour”. Exactly this example is prefilled when you open the page – replace the values with yours.

Catering for authorities, schools and canteens

Anyone invoicing the public sector notices quickly: canteen catering, food at school events, receptions at the town hall or seminars at state agencies – here the XRechnung is the norm, not the exception. Many caterers and event suppliers therefore issue dozens of XRechnungen every month. For the first order this tool is enough. Once it becomes routine, you no longer want to type it by hand.

Univents creates the matching XRechnung automatically for every invoice and credit note and delivers it with the invoice – the Leitweg ID lives on the customer record, the line items come from the quote, the check runs in the background. What that looks like day to day is on the page about quotes and invoices.