Electronic invoicing: ZUGFeRD, Factur-X, and XRechnung

TimeBill generates legally structured electronic invoices for sellers based in Germany or France. Your customers can be anywhere; only the seller country is limited to these two.

The formats

• Germany — ZUGFeRD 2.5: a hybrid PDF/A-3b, meaning a normal, human-readable PDF with the machine-readable e-invoice XML (EN 16931 profile) embedded inside. One file serves both purposes.
• Germany — XRechnung 3.0: a standalone XML file (no PDF) for German public-sector buyers, submitted through their invoice portals. See XRechnung for German public-sector clients.
• France — Factur-X 1.09: technically the same hybrid PDF as ZUGFeRD, under its French market name.

Peppol/UBL is not supported. The country names in the picker follow your app language (a German Mac shows "Deutschland").

Turn it on (or off)

1. Open Your Details from the project sidebar.
2. Under Electronic Invoicing, set Format to your country's entry. The picker is the on/off switch: choose None to go back to plain PDFs. If your Mac's region is Germany or France, e-invoicing is on by default.
3. Fill in whatever the orange warning lists. It reads "Still required for ZUGFeRD: …" (naming your selected format). Typically that is your Company Name and VAT ID (labeled USt-IdNr. for Germany, N° TVA for France). German sellers may enter a Tax Number (Steuernummer) instead; one of the two is enough.
4. Under Payment Information, keep the Account Type on SEPA (EU) and enter a valid IBAN and BIC/SWIFT. E-invoices require SEPA details, and the IBAN is checksum-validated.
5. Optionally set Contact Name; if empty, your company name is used as the contact in e-invoices.
6. Small businesses on a VAT exemption scheme: enable the exemption toggle and keep the tax rate at 0%. The toggle is named after your country's scheme: Kleinunternehmer (§ 19 UStG) in Germany, VAT exempt (franchise en base, art. 293 B CGI) in France, and VAT exempt (small business scheme) elsewhere. The Exemption Note below it is prefilled with your country's standard sentence and stays editable.
7. Click Save.

Then complete the buyer side: edit the customer and fill Country Code (e.g. DE) and optionally VAT ID (optional) until the editor shows the green "Ready for …" check for your format. See Customer fields for electronic invoicing.

Exporting

Once a format is selected, the export button in the Generate Invoice sheet changes to Generate ZUGFeRD PDF, Generate Factur-X PDF, or Generate XRechnung XML. TimeBill never silently downgrades to a plain PDF: if required data is missing, the button is disabled and the footer lists every blocker under a heading like "ZUGFeRD still needs:". See fixing export blockers for the most common ones: a VAT ID without its country prefix (it must read DE123456789, not 123456789), a mistyped IBAN, or a 0% tax rate without the exemption toggle.

Good to know

• VAT-exempt sellers, one manual step: the Exemption Note is embedded only in the electronic XML part of the invoice. It is not printed on the human-readable PDF pages of a hybrid ZUGFeRD or Factur-X invoice, and plain PDFs don't get it either. To show the sentence on the visual invoice, type it into Additional Notes in the Generate Invoice sheet and flip Save as Default so it appears on every future invoice.
• Archived invoices in the vault are permanently stamped with the format label active at export time (e.g. "ZUGFeRD 2.5"), so later spec updates never relabel old documents.
• The German Tax Number field only appears (and only counts) while a German format is selected.
• The readiness warnings in Your Details and the customer editor are informational; they never block saving or classic PDF exports. Only the e-invoice export itself enforces them.