Fix BR-9: Seller country code (BT-40) missing

What does BR-9 mean?

The Seller postal address (BG-5) shall contain a Seller country code (BT-40). 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-9

• 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-9

1. Find the faulty spot in the XML. Open the XML of the invoice and go to field BG-5 along this XPath://ram:SellerTradeParty/ram:PostalTradeAddress/ram:CountryID
2. Apply the fix. Add the Seller country code (BT-40) in 'ram:SellerTradeParty/ram:PostalTradeAddress/ram:CountryID', e.g. 'DE'.
3. Validate again. Save the file and validate it again to check that BR-9 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:PostalTradeAddress>
  <ram:CityName>München</ram:CityName>
  <!-- ram:CountryID fehlt -->
</ram:PostalTradeAddress>

<ram:PostalTradeAddress>
  <ram:CityName>München</ram:CityName>
  <ram:CountryID>DE</ram:CountryID>
</ram:PostalTradeAddress>

Frequent questions about BR-9

Related error codes

Check BR-9 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.