BR-DE – XRechnung

BR-DE-27: seller telephone number (BT-42) has too few digits

WarningXRechnung business rule (KoSIT)

The rule's own wording

[BR-DE-27] In BT-42 sollen mindestens drei Ziffern enthalten sein.

Source: KoSIT XRechnung, version 3.0.2 (Schematron 2.6.0)

The fix in the XML

Enter a complete number with the area code, in UBL cbc:Telephone in the seller contact, in CII ram:CompleteNumber of the TelephoneUniversalCommunication. Formatting characters such as spaces, brackets or a plus sign are allowed; what counts is at least three digits.

Before – invalid

<cac:Contact>
  <cbc:Name>Accounting</cbc:Name>
  <cbc:Telephone>-</cbc:Telephone>
  <cbc:ElectronicMail>[email protected]</cbc:ElectronicMail>
</cac:Contact>

After – corrected

<cac:Contact>
  <cbc:Name>Accounting</cbc:Name>
  <cbc:Telephone>+49 30 1234560</cbc:Telephone>
  <cbc:ElectronicMail>[email protected]</cbc:ElectronicMail>
</cac:Contact>

Meaning of the rule

The seller contact of your invoice does contain a telephone field, but the value has fewer than three digits. The field is then formally filled without the recipient being able to call anyone. Typical are placeholders such as a dash, the word none or a dot, used to get past a mandatory field. XRechnung uses this rule to check whether the number is at least plausible.

What usually goes wrong

A placeholder such as a dash or the word none was entered to fill the mandatory field.
Only the extension without the area code stands in the field.
The number was cut off on export.

Questions and answers

Isn't the telephone number a mandatory field anyway?

Yes. BR-DE-6 reads: „Das Element "Seller contact telephone number" (BT-42) muss übermittelt werden.“ BR-DE-27 only judges whether the content of that field has at least three digits.

Which format does the rule expect for the telephone number?

No fixed one. It only counts the digits; international notation with a plus sign and spaces is recommended but not prescribed.

EN 16931 fields

BT-42
BG-6

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The rule in detail

UBL · Context (XPath): /ubl:Invoice/cac:AccountingSupplierParty/cac:Party/cac:Contact | /cn:CreditNote/cac:AccountingSupplierParty/cac:Party/cac:Contact
UBL · Schematron test: matches(normalize-space(cbc:Telephone), $XR-TELEPHONE-REGEX)
CII · Context (XPath): /rsm:CrossIndustryInvoice/rsm:SupplyChainTradeTransaction/ram:ApplicableHeaderTradeAgreement/ram:SellerTradeParty/ram:DefinedTradeContact
CII · Schematron test: matches(normalize-space(ram:TelephoneUniversalCommunication/ram:CompleteNumber), $XR-TELEPHONE-REGEX)

Explanation written on 14 September 2026

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