XRechnung and the Leitweg-ID — invoicing German public buyers without the pain

Germany was early and strict about B2G e-invoicing: since November 2020, suppliers to federal public bodies must send a structured electronic invoice — a PDF attachment is explicitly not one. The required format is XRechnung, and the routing key that decides whether your invoice arrives at the right desk is a number most non-German suppliers have never heard of: the Leitweg-ID.

XRechnung in one paragraph

XRechnung is not a German invention parallel to Europe — it's the German profile (CIUS) of EN 16931, the same European semantic standard behind PEPPOL BIS and France's Chorus Pro syntaxes. Same fields, same structure, plus a handful of German business rules. If your invoicing tool already produces clean EN 16931 UBL, XRechnung is a dialect, not a new language.

The Leitweg-ID — the field that actually routes

Every German public buyer exposes a Leitweg-ID — a structured identifier like 991-33333TEST-33 — that tells the reception platform which authority, department and cost centre the invoice belongs to. It goes into the invoice's buyer reference field. Get it wrong and the invoice bounces or lands in limbo; there is no fuzzy matching.

Where to find it: on the purchase order or contract. German authorities are obliged to communicate it when ordering. If it's not on the paperwork, ask your contact — "Wie lautet Ihre Leitweg-ID?" is a completely normal question.

Where invoices go: ZRE, OZG-RE and the Länder

• ZRE receives invoices for the direct federal administration

(ministries and their agencies).

• OZG-RE serves the indirect federal administration and several

federal states that joined it.

• Most Länder (states) and municipalities run their own portals or

accept PEPPOL — which, increasingly, is the practical route: both ZRE and OZG-RE are reachable via the PEPPOL network too.

That last point matters: if you can send PEPPOL, you can reach much of the German public sector without touching a German portal UI at all.

And B2B? The clock is ticking

Independently of B2G, Germany's Growth Opportunities Act started the B2B e-invoicing clock: since January 2025 every German business must be able to receive EN 16931 e-invoices, with the obligation to send phasing in through 2027–2028. Foreign suppliers aren't directly in scope, but German clients will increasingly ask for structured invoices instead of PDFs — being ready early is a sales advantage, not a compliance chore.

How Eurobillr handles it

The Germany console (E-invoicing → Germany · XRechnung) shows your connection status and every XRechnung dispatch. Building the document is the boring part by design: Eurobillr renders your normal invoice as EN 16931 UBL with the XRechnung profile and carries the Leitweg-ID as the buyer reference — you store it once on the client. Dispatches run in audit-only mode until you configure a live endpoint, so you can inspect the exact XML that would be transmitted. And where the buyer is PEPPOL-reachable, you can skip the portal entirely and deliver through Eurobillr's existing PEPPOL channel.

Background: our Germany e-invoicing guide, EN 16931, PEPPOL.