Fix BR-7: Buyer name (BT-44) missing

What does BR-7 mean?

An Invoice shall contain the Buyer name (BT-44). It belongs to the mandatory data of the European standard EN 16931; without it the invoice is structurally incomplete and gets rejected.

Common causes of BR-7

• 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-7

1. Find the faulty spot in the XML. Open the XML of the invoice and go to field BT-44 along this XPath://ram:ApplicableHeaderTradeAgreement/ram:BuyerTradeParty/ram:Name
2. Apply the fix. Add the Buyer name (BT-44) in 'ram:BuyerTradeParty/ram:Name'.
3. Validate again. Save the file and validate it again to check that BR-7 is no longer reported.

Before / after: the XML example

This is the spot in question before and after the fix (Cross Industry Invoice, ZUGFeRD/Factur-X).

<ram:BuyerTradeParty>
  <!-- ram:Name fehlt -->
</ram:BuyerTradeParty>

<ram:BuyerTradeParty>
  <ram:Name>Beispiel AG</ram:Name>
</ram:BuyerTradeParty>

Frequent questions about BR-7

Related error codes

Check BR-7 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.