E-Invoicing with Factur-X and ZUGFerD

Digitalization has changed how businesses operate. One great example is how e-invoicing systems have become more and more popular in Europe since the European Union created the Directive 2014/55/EU. More importantly, this directive has sought to normalize and standardize e-invoicing systems across EU member states, and, in this way, they can guarantee that e-invoices comply with legal and technical requirements (EN 16931 Standard).

As a result, some EU members, such as France and Germany, are preparing to shift completely towards e-invoicing systems. More precisely, as of 2025, businesses can voluntarily adopt and get acquainted with these systems because, starting in 2026, their use will be mandatory. Therefore, in this blog, we'd like to present two new features in 0CodeKit related to this topic.

A bit of context

Germany introduced a new e-invoicing standard, "Zentraler User Guide des Forum elektronische Rechnung Deutschland (ZUGFerD)", expanding later to France, "Factur-X". To be clear, both are the same technical concept with different names.

But why are these systems so special? Several reasons!

• ZUGFerD and Factur-X are unique hybrid e-invoicing systems. Unlike many other systems that only use or accept one format, they successfully integrate human-readable formats (PDFs and A-3) with a machine-interpretable format (XML).

• ZUGFerD supports Business-to-Business (B2B) transactions. Although the Directive 2014/55/EU focused on Business-to-Government (B2G) transactions, ZUGFerD has exceeded this expectation. This e-invoicing system is now suitable for large companies, medium-sized enterprises, small businesses, and freelancers.

Validate and embed ZUGFerD/Factur-X invoices

Since this topic has gained a lot of importance in the last few years, we've developed two tools that can positively contribute to invoicing practices, which are compliant with ZUGFerD and Factur-X.

Validate Factur-X/ZUGFerD invoice

Would you like to ensure that your invoices adhere to Factur-X or ZUGFerD's standards? Our Validate Factur-X/ZUGFerD Invoice feature checks the integrity of your invoices and returns a validation status with a list of errors found.

Embed Factur-X/ZUGFerD invoice

Do you have an XML invoice that you would like to convert into a human-readable format? Our Embed Factur-X/ZUGFerD Invoice easily converts XML invoices into an A-3 format or PDFs. Businesses and users must not do this process manually anymore - you can simply automate it!