Benefits and necessity of electronic invoices
Electronic invoices are an increasingly common way to bill products and services. Compared to the classic paper invoice, you save time (e. g. for creation, transport and processing) and costs, as well as natural resources (paper).

Moreover, since November 27, 2020, the German eInvoicing format XRechnung has become obligatory if a company wants to send an invoice (amount of EUR 1,000 and higher) to public authorities at federal level and in some federal states (for example Bremen since November 2020 and Baden-Wuerttemberg starting January 1, 2022) in Germany.

XRechnung is a German standard, but it transforms the European standard for electronic invoicing EN 16931-1 into national law and thereby implements Directive 2014/55/EU of the European Parliament and the Council.

What is required for efficient electronic invoice processing, are generally recognized, uniform standards that are easy to apply in practice. This is especially true in the general case that buyer and seller do not use the same invoicing and accounting software. The PDF Xpansion SDK product offers these standards and corresponding functionality.

The product supports the electronic invoicing specifications FACTUR-X, ZUGFeRD (all officially published standards, currently 1.0 to 2.1.1) and XRechnung (all officially published standards, including 2.1.1). All of them are compliant with the standard EN 16931-1. While XRechnung only needs a structured XML file that can be read/loaded by appropriate accounting programs or billing systems directly, ZUGFeRD and FACTUR-X consist of a PDF/A3-file that is the visual representation of the invoice (just like a “simple” PDF file, for example based on a Microsoft Word document) plus a structured XML file with the invoice content. This XML file can be read/loaded by appropriate accounting programs or billing systems as well.

Feature sets of PDF Xpansion SDK - E-Invoicing (Invoice Creation)
The product is made to create electronic invoices that have the specifications FACTUR-X, ZUGFeRD or XRechnung. It offers the following:

• Creation of XML invoices (XML files) with PDF Xpansion SDK API, support of all profiles defined in the three specifications.
• Creation of PDF/A-3 invoices, either based on already existing compliant XML files or after having previously created such files with the API.
• Conversion of existing simple, unstructured PDF to PDF/A-3 (the necessary simple PDF is not created by E-Invoicing (Invoice Creation) product, but simple PDF creation is available separately, details available upon request).

Example scenario for ZUGFeRD invoice creation

• Open an existing PDF file (= visual representation of the invoice).
• Convert PDF to PDF/A-3.
• Embed the ZUGFeRD-compliant XML file in PDF/A-3 file or first create this XML file with the PDF Xpansion SDK API and then embed it. In both cases, all ZUGFeRD profiles are supported.
• Save the ZUGFeRD file (PDF/A-3).