Attestwire › Rule reference › BR-DE-5

BR-DE-5 XRechnung requires a seller contact point

noun · XRechnung · fatal · BT-41

Your invoice was refused because the seller contact names no contact point. The contact group is there but incomplete: an XRechnung needs a contact point, a telephone number and an email address, and a department name such as “Accounts” is enough for the first. In the standard the field is BT-41; BR-DE-5 is the rule that requires it, and BR-DE-6 and BR-DE-7 check the other two parts.

Diese Regel auf Deutsch: BR-DE-5 — auf Deutsch erklärt.

Business term

BT-41 — Seller contact point

Severity

fatal

Applies to

xrechnung-ubl, xrechnung-cii

The fix

Set seller.contact.name to the person or office that answers invoice questions. "Buchhaltung" is fine.

What the rule requires

Set the seller contact point (BT-41): the person or office that answers questions about the invoice.

A department name is enough, and in practice the sturdier choice: Buchhaltung, Debitorenbuchhaltung, Accounts receivable. You do not have to write a named person into every invoice.

In this library the field is seller.contact.name.

Das Element "Seller contact point" (BT-41) muss übermittelt werden.

A passing value

"contact": { "name": "Buchhaltung" }

Why it exists

BT-41 answers the question “who do I ask?”. The telephone number and the email address only say how to reach someone, not whom. At an authority that picks the case up again four weeks later, that is the difference between a query and a returned invoice.

What the library returns

The full error returned by @attestwire/en16931. It includes the rule ID, affected field and suggested correction. Developers can use this object in their application:

{
  "rule": "BR-DE-5",
  "field": "BT-41",
  "severity": "fatal",
  "message": "XRechnung requires the element \"Seller contact point\" (BT-41). The seller contact group is present but incomplete — BR-DE-5, BR-DE-6 and BR-DE-7 each make one part of it mandatory, so supplying two of the three still fails.",
  "fix": "Set seller.contact.name to the person or desk that answers invoice queries — a department name such as \"Buchhaltung\" is acceptable.",
  "example": "\"contact\": { \"name\": \"Buchhaltung\" }",
  "xpath": "/ubl:Invoice/cac:AccountingSupplierParty/cac:Party/cac:Contact/cbc:Name",
  "docsUrl": "https://attestwire.com/rules/BR-DE-5"
}

xpath is always a UBL path. On a CII invoice, look for the matching CII field instead.

How our check differs

See also: BR-DE-6 — the telephone number; BR-DE-7 — the email address; BR-DE-2 — the group all three belong to.