BR-3 in your own invoice? Upload the file and find every error in seconds.
What does BR-3 mean?
An Invoice shall have an Invoice issue date (BT-2). It is one of the mandatory fields of the European standard EN 16931; without it the invoice is structurally incomplete and gets rejected.
Common causes of BR-3
- The mandatory element is missing entirely from the structured XML.
- The value appears only in the visible PDF layout, not in the XML.
- The element was sent empty.
How to fix BR-3
- Find the faulty spot in the XML. Open the XML of the invoice and go to field BT-2 along this XPath:
//rsm:ExchangedDocument/ram:IssueDateTime - Apply the fix. Add the invoice issue date (BT-2) in 'ram:ExchangedDocument/ram:IssueDateTime/udt:DateTimeString' (format='102', YYYYMMDD).
- Validate again. Save the file and validate it again to check that BR-3 is no longer reported.
Concrete fix
Add the invoice issue date (BT-2) in 'ram:ExchangedDocument/ram:IssueDateTime/udt:DateTimeString' (format='102', YYYYMMDD).
XPath
//rsm:ExchangedDocument/ram:IssueDateTimeFrequent questions about BR-3
How do I fix BR-3?
Add the invoice issue date (BT-2) in 'ram:ExchangedDocument/ram:IssueDateTime/udt:DateTimeString' (format='102', YYYYMMDD).
Related error codes
Check BR-3 automatically
Instead of digging through the XML by hand you can validate your ZUGFeRD or XRechnung file online – upload the PDF or the XML and you get every error with rule ID, affected field, fix and XPath, as a readable report or as JSON through the API.