Invoicing

Writing invoices in Germany is not a creative act but a compliance drill with traps. Section 14 of the VAT Act dictates what has to be on it: full name and address of both parties, tax number or VAT ID, sequential invoice number, service date, quantity and type of service, net amount, tax rate, tax amount. Forget one mandatory field and your customer risks losing their input tax deduction - and then they call you. The invoicing system knows these mandatory fields and keeps you from dropping one.

The free quick generator is the entry point. Type in the recipient, line items and your bank details and get a finished PDF invoice per DIN 5008. Add your IBAN and a SEPA QR code lands on the invoice automatically, which your customer scans with their banking app to pay in seconds. Small business under Section 19, reverse charge, cancellation invoice, credit note under Section 14(2) - the typical cases are built in as presets so you do not have to guess. All of it runs client-side in the browser, no account required.

The full suite lifts this to business grade. Instead of single documents you get a real document chain: a quote turns into an order confirmation with one click, then a delivery note, then the invoice. Line items and customer data carry over, you never retype. Customer and article masters fill themselves, you keep an eye on open items and incoming payments, and the dunning workflow with reminders and escalation levels runs semi-automatically on request.

E-invoicing is no longer optional, it is coming. Since 2025 every German company must be able to receive B2B e-invoices, and from 2027/2028 the issuing obligation phases in by turnover. The suite produces ZUGFeRD and XRechnung per EN 16931, meaning structured XML data embedded inside a PDF/A-3 that both humans and machines can read. Incoming e-invoices can be read into the inbox and processed. For public-sector invoices (B2G) there is the Leitweg-ID routing.

GoBD is the part most tools stay quiet about. Invoices must be immutable, traceable and kept for ten years. The suite finalizes invoices (Festschreibung), issues sequential, gapless number ranges and logs changes instead of silently overwriting them. For your tax advisor there is a DATEV export so your bookkeeping does not drown in email attachments.

The rest is what saves you time: recurring invoices for subscriptions and retainers, partial and final invoices for projects, CSV import for the customer master, cash discount and payment terms, reports on turnover and open items. None of it is mandatory - you can just write a quick invoice and leave. But when your shop grows, the system grows with it.

And yes, it stays data-frugal where it can. The quick generator calculates in the browser, the full suite only stores what the document chain and GoBD actually require. No invoice wanders into someone elses cloud so they can show you an upsell banner. Your numbers are yours.