Bremen will be the first of Germany’s 16 federal states to accept electronic invoices created using the XRechnung standard. This standard has been developed by the national IT Standards Coordination Group (Koordinierungsstelle für IT-Standards, KoSIT). The KoSIT collection of data exchange standards and codelists is (also) available on Joinup.
In KoSIT, the Federal government and the 16 states work together to develop eGovernment standards. The organisation, hosted by the city-state of Bremen, is making the Xrepository collection of standards available to promote the use of eGovernment services.
The XRechnung standard is a German implementation of the Core Invoice Usage Specification (EN 16931) that is being developed by the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN), one of the European standards organisations officially recognised by the European Commission.
Pioneering
The standard was published late last year, and many public services are busy implementing it, says Renzo Kottmann, standards specialist at the state of Bremen. This November, Bremen will become the first state to accept XRechnung invoices, the state announced. Bremen is pioneering the use of electronic invoices, the state says, quoting Karoline Linnert, the state minister for finance: “We want to make it easier for companies to switch to this new process.”
By November next year, all public services in Germany must be able to accept electronic invoices based on XRechnung.
More information:
Announcement by the State of Bremen (in German)
About KoSIT at the State of Bremen