What does BR-DE-19 mean?
With payment means 58 (SEPA credit transfer), XRechnung checks whether the IBAN the buyer should pay to (BT-84) is a valid IBAN: country code, check digits, then up to 30 letters or digits, and the check digits must add up. With payment means 30 the rule checks nothing. The rule comes from KoSIT (XRechnung) and is a warning: the invoice stays valid.
Common causes of BR-DE-19
- The IBAN is shortened, for example with asterisks as on a receipt (DE02 **** **** 2051).
- A typo: then the check digits do not add up.
- Dots, hyphens or other characters in the value. Spaces do no harm, the check removes them first.
- The account number is in 'ram:ProprietaryID' instead of 'ram:IBANID'; with payment means 58 the rule expects an IBAN.
- The account is missing altogether. Then the warning comes too, together with the error CII-SR-470 and, for XRechnung, BR-DE-23-a.
How to fix BR-DE-19
- Find the faulty spot in the XML. Open the XML of the invoice and go to field BT-84 along this XPath:
//ram:SpecifiedTradeSettlementPaymentMeans/ram:PayeePartyCreditorFinancialAccount/ram:IBANID - Apply the fix. With payment means 58 (SEPA credit transfer) the IBAN the buyer pays to (BT-84) should be a valid IBAN. A shortened or wrong IBAN causes this warning, and so does an account number without IBAN; the invoice stays valid. If the account is missing altogether, the warning comes too, together with the error CII-SR-470 and, for XRechnung, BR-DE-23-a. To avoid the warning, enter the full IBAN in 'ram:PayeePartyCreditorFinancialAccount/ram:IBANID', for example 'DE02120300000000202051'.
- Validate again. Save the file and validate it again to check that BR-DE-19 is no longer reported.
With payment means 58 (SEPA credit transfer) the IBAN the buyer pays to (BT-84) should be a valid IBAN. A shortened or wrong IBAN causes this warning, and so does an account number without IBAN; the invoice stays valid. If the account is missing altogether, the warning comes too, together with the error CII-SR-470 and, for XRechnung, BR-DE-23-a. To avoid the warning, enter the full IBAN in 'ram:PayeePartyCreditorFinancialAccount/ram:IBANID', for example 'DE02120300000000202051'.
//ram:SpecifiedTradeSettlementPaymentMeans/ram:PayeePartyCreditorFinancialAccount/ram:IBANIDBefore / after: the XML example
This is the spot in question before and after the fix (Cross Industry Invoice, ZUGFeRD/Factur-X).
<ram:PayeePartyCreditorFinancialAccount>
<ram:IBANID>DE02**************2051</ram:IBANID>
</ram:PayeePartyCreditorFinancialAccount>
<ram:PayeePartyCreditorFinancialAccount>
<ram:IBANID>DE02120300000000202051</ram:IBANID>
</ram:PayeePartyCreditorFinancialAccount>
Frequent questions about BR-DE-19
Is BR-DE-19 still checked?
How do I fix BR-DE-19?
Does BR-DE-19 apply to ZUGFeRD?
Related error codes
Check BR-DE-19 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.