Attestwire › Rule reference › PEPPOL-EN16931-R003

PEPPOL-EN16931-R003 A Peppol invoice needs a buyer reference or an order reference

noun · Peppol BIS · fatal · BT-10 / BT-13

Your invoice was refused because it carries neither a buyer reference nor a purchase order reference. On Peppol one of the two is required, so that the buyer’s accounts payable system has something to match the invoice against. Either one fixes it: the reference your customer gave you, or their purchase order number. In the standard the fields are BT-10 and BT-13, and PEPPOL-EN16931-R003 is the rule that asks for one of them.

Business term

BT-10 / BT-13 — Buyer reference / Purchase order reference

Severity

fatal

Applies to

peppol-bis-3

The fix

Set buyerReference to the reference your customer gave you, or orderReference to their purchase order number; if you have both, send both. Ask the customer rather than inventing a value: a reference they do not recognise matches nothing.

What the rule requires

Supply the buyer reference (BT-10) or the purchase order reference (BT-13), or both. Core EN 16931 leaves both optional; Peppol BIS Billing 3.0, the rule set of the Peppol invoice network, requires at least one.

The buyer reference is whatever your customer told you to quote: a cost centre, a contact code, and for a German public body the Leitweg-ID. The purchase order reference is the number on their order. Neither has a fixed format.

In this library the fields are buyerReference and orderReference.

[PEPPOL-EN16931-R003]-A buyer reference or purchase order reference MUST be provided.

A passing value

"buyerReference": "04011000-1234512345-06"

Why it exists

Peppol delivers straight into the buyer’s accounts payable system, and that system needs one handle to route and match the invoice: a cost centre, a requisition, an order. Without one, an invoice that arrived in seconds waits weeks for a person to work out who ordered it.

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": "PEPPOL-EN16931-R003",
  "field": [
    "BT-10",
    "BT-13"
  ],
  "severity": "fatal",
  "message": "A buyer reference (BT-10) or a purchase order reference (BT-13) must be provided, and this invoice carries neither. Core EN 16931 leaves both optional; Peppol makes the pair conditionally mandatory because the network delivers straight into the buyer's accounts payable system, and that system needs one handle to match the invoice against — a cost centre, a requisition, a purchase order. Without one, an invoice that arrives in seconds waits weeks for a human to work out who ordered it. This is a Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 profile rule: it applies because profile is \"peppol-bis-3\". It does not apply to the en16931, xrechnung-ubl or xrechnung-cii profiles, whose validators will accept the same document.",
  "fix": "Set buyerReference to whatever reference your customer gave you when they ordered (in Germany this is the Leitweg-ID; elsewhere it is often a cost centre or contact code), or set orderReference to their purchase order number. Either satisfies the rule; supply both if you have both.",
  "example": "\"buyerReference\": \"04011000-1234512345-06\"",
  "xpath": "/ubl:Invoice/cbc:BuyerReference",
  "docsUrl": "https://attestwire.com/rules/PEPPOL-EN16931-R003"
}

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-15 — the XRechnung rule that requires the buyer reference itself; PEPPOL-EN16931-R010 — the buyer electronic address, the other thing Peppol needs to deliver.