eRechnung - Unnecessary requirement for both VAT and Tax numbers

General Discussion
1

I am using IP v1.7.0 and living in Germany (replies in German or English welcome)

In Germany you are not required to provide both VAT and Tax number (USt-Id.Nr. oder Steuernummer) - legally you can use one or the other.

However, InvoicePlane doesn’t let me create an e-Invoice unless I provide BOTH numbers for client AND user. So if I only have the client VAT number (USt-Id.Nr.) and only my personal tax number, even though this fine for the current ZUGFeRD version 2.0 / 2.0.1 (2019) (EN 16931), InvoicePlane doesn’t let me create the e-Invoice.

There is a message saying: “An e-invoice XML will only be created if all required fields are filled in!” with a box showing what is missing.

I have attached a picture of the boxes that are required.

How can I get around this? Is there a setting somewhere that I have missed?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Screenshot 2026-10-14 110051
Screenshot 2026-10-14 110051767×342 10.5 KB

2

Is there a setting somewhere that I have missed?

There is not a setting you have missed. It’s literally the logic that was programmed in to version 1.6.3 back then and went through multiple stages of “testing” before that version went final.

How can I get around this?

There are multiple ways to get around this, 1 of them not being adviseable.
I’ll tell you one way:

  1. Any way you can place spaces, dots, anything in those fields that are marked as required?

You might run into the fact that maybe then you can export your ZUGFeRD file, but on the import side they might not like it, you’ll never know.

3

Thanks for your reply.

That’s a shame. You are probably right that an invoice with bogus values placed in the tax or VAT field would be flagged when imported.

It is already a problem because different companies are using different systems to validate the XML which end with different results. There is so far no consensus on exactly what is valid and what not.

Do you happen to know in which PHP files this checked?

4

The error message (help text) comes from InvoicePlane/application/modules/clients/views/partial_client_einvoicing.php at 32b92f8105654d9d7cc2c739b9fd9da8eb15a228 · InvoicePlane/InvoicePlane · GitHub

I would have to quadruple check if the actual checking for those both values also comes from that file.

if it’s feasable there can be a setting in ipconfig.php but only if validators and external applications accept that not both fields are filled (hope it makes sense).
It was programmed intentionally that way.

Placing spaces or dots in those required fields is basically the same as that “ZUGFERD_NOT_BOTH_NECESSARY” setting in ipconfig.php

Hope it makes sense.

5

Thank you very much for your help. I will try to look at this during the week.

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