The most expensive misconception about e-invoicing is that it requires new accounting software. Discover the honest 5-step process to get compliant, from cleaning master data to choosing the right converter.
The most expensive misconception about e-invoicing is that it requires new accounting software. It does not. In most cases the system you already use can stay exactly where it is.
What has to change is what happens to the invoice after your system produces it. Here is the honest version of that work — including which parts take an afternoon and which take a month.
Export one real outgoing invoice in every format your system offers. Most ERPs and accounting packages can already emit something structured: an XML export, a ZUGFeRD PDF, a CSV, or an IDoc if you are on SAP.
Then check it. Run the file through our free E-Invoice Validator and see how close you already are. Many companies discover they are producing valid structured data and simply not sending it anywhere.
This is the step people skip and then repeat. Structured invoicing turns tolerated gaps into hard errors. Missing VAT identification numbers, incomplete addresses, VAT category codes that do not match the treatment actually applied, absent payment details — all of it survived on a printed invoice and none of it survives validation.
Work through your customer master and your article master before you touch the transport layer. The technical integration will be quick; this will not.
Three questions, per group rather than per customer:
You do not need a single answer for everyone. You need one answer per group, and a provider that can serve all of them from the same feed.
This is the part that replaces "we need a new system". Instead of forcing your ERP to produce every target format, you send it what it already produces, and conversion happens outside it. Your invoice run does not change. Your chart of accounts does not change. Your team's daily process does not change.
We integrate directly with the systems most of our customers already run:
Two things get forgotten because they are not the exciting half:
German businesses have had to be able to receive structured e-invoices since 1 January 2025. An inbox is not a process — someone has to be able to read the XML, route it for approval and post it.
The digital original has to be archived digitally, in a form that preserves authenticity, integrity and legibility. Saving the PDF visualisation to a network drive does not satisfy the requirement.
With reasonable master data: a few weeks, most of it spent on data rather than technology, and no change to the accounting system.
For a company whose customer master has not been reviewed in a decade: longer — but the cost sits in Step 2, and no amount of new software removes it.
The fastest way to find out where you actually stand is to check one invoice. Run it through the validator, or start a free trial and send a real test invoice end to end.
Get instant access to our free E-Invoice Validator. Check XRechnung, Peppol BIS and ZUGFeRD for business rule errors before sending.
Free validation tool • No registration required • Instant results
No. In most cases, your current system can stay exactly where it is. You simply export what it already produces (XML, CSV, IDoc, etc.) and use an external converter to transform it into the required format (like XRechnung or Peppol BIS) before sending.
Cleaning your master data. Structured invoicing turns tolerated gaps (missing VAT IDs, incomplete addresses, wrong VAT codes) into hard validation errors. This data cleanup takes weeks, while the technical integration takes only days.
No. The digital original (the XML file) must be archived digitally in a form that preserves its authenticity, integrity, and legibility. A visual PDF representation does not satisfy legal archiving requirements for structured e-invoices.
For German public authorities, use XRechnung with their Leitweg-ID. For German businesses, XRechnung or ZUGFeRD works best. For business customers abroad, Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 is the standard, or a specific national platform if the country requires it.
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