Germany's E-Invoice 2027: the 12-point readiness check for the Mittelstand

Wed, 27 May 2026 11:30:00 +0200

April 2026, month-end close at a mid-size German machinery manufacturer. The CFO calls. Eight input-VAT reversals in the first quarter alone. One of his suppliers has been sending invoices labelled “E-invoice” in the header since January — all of them PDFs without embedded XML. The accounting team typed them in manually, as always. At the VAT reconciliation, they failed: the German Ministry of Finance letter from 25 October 2025 makes it explicit that a PDF without EN 16931-conformant XML is not an e-invoice in the VAT sense — and the input VAT deduction is denied if the supplier is already subject to the mandate.

DATEV on Pfisterer Consulting

Germany's E-Invoice 2027: the 12-point readiness check for the Mittelstand