EN 16931 compliance
EN 16931 is the European standard that defines the core elements of an electronic invoice. In Germany, XRechnung and ZUGFeRD invoices must comply with this standard, and official Schematron rules are used to check that compliance. Schematron is a rule-based language for validating the structure and content of an XML document.
To support this requirement, AP Essentials can automatically validate XRechnung and ZUGFeRD invoices against the official German Schematron rules after extraction, before verification.
Enabling validation
To enable this feature, select German e-invoicing Mandate: Schematron Validation for XRechnung in the Extraction view. You can enable this setting for customer accounts or for individual buyers.
When enabled, AP Essentials validates each XRechnung or ZUGFeRD invoice immediately after extraction completes.
Validation results
Each validated invoice receives one of the following results:
- Passed - The invoice validates correctly and proceeds automatically, as it would without validation.
- Passed with messages - The invoice validates correctly, but has warnings or informational messages worth reading. The Pending manual verification status is applied.
- Failed - The invoice does not comply with the rules. The Pending manual verification status is applied.
- Failed to process - The validation service could not produce a result, for example because the service was unavailable after repeated attempts. The Pending manual verification status is applied.
Validation never causes an invoice to be rejected automatically. A user can still approve an invoice that has warnings, errors, or no result.
Validation results are noted in the document history. For invoices that do not pass validation, AP Essentials Office shows a summary of the validation result. The full validation report is saved as a text file on the Attachments tab. Viewing the report requires the Storage service.